Contents

The land on which Eastbury House now stands was once part of the demesne of Barking Abbey. The house was built in the 1570s by Clement Sisley, a wealthy merchant, who purchased the land after the dissolution of Barking Abbey.[1] It was probably the first brick built building in the area at that time; it had glass windows and very high chimneys, indicating the wealth of the owner. Glass was probably imported from Italy as at that time English glass was relatively poor in quality. A dendrochronology survey dates the timber roof to 1566[2] and there is documentary evidence which describes the dates 1572 carved in the brickwork and 1573 on a lead water spout indicating finishing touches to the building. Recent research has shown that in the early 17th century the house was in the occupation of a Catholic family with close family connections to some of the principal conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

The house fell into increasing dilapidation from the late 18th century. The Great Tower Staircase was demolished by 1814. Wooden flooring and original fireplaces were removed in the 1830s. By the late 19th century only the west wing of the house was habitable. In 1918 the house was bought by the National Trust and was restored. In 1931 it opened as the Museum of Barking. The house is managed by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

The building was given Grade I listed status in 1954.[3] In recent years it has benefitted from a major restoration programme, financed through several successful Heritage Lottery Fund bids. The latest phase completed in 2010 includes a major permanent exhibition on the history of the building and its various owners.

1.
Eastbury Park
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Eastbury Park was a country estate near Tarrant Gunville in Dorset, England. It contained a large mansion designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, the mansion has not survived, but its former service wing has become a country house known as Eastbury House, a Grade I listed building. The house was designed by Vanbrugh for George Dodington, who was Secretary to the Treasurer of the Navy, the house was inherited by Richard Grenville-Temple, 2nd Earl Temple in 1762, who had no use for it, and he had it demolished in 1782. The service wing, designed by Vanbrugh and built at the time as the rest of the mansion, survived the demolition. It became a Grade I listed building in 1955, the parklands are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens

2.
Manor House
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A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The term is loosely applied to various country houses, frequently dating from the late medieval era. They were sometimes fortified, but this was intended more for show than for defence. Manor houses existed in most European countries where feudalism existed, where they were known as castles, palaces. Many buildings, such as schools, are named Manor, the reason behind this is because the building was or is close to a manor house. The lord of the manor may have several properties within a county or, for example in the case of a feudal baron, spread across a kingdom. A large and suitable building was required within the manor for such purpose, generally in the form of a hall. This also gave the opportunity for the manor house to be cleaned, especially important in the days of the cess-pit. Thus such non-resident lords needed to appoint a steward or seneschal to act as their deputy in such matters, the day-to-day administration was carried out by a resident official in authority at each manor, who in England was called a bailiff, or reeve. Although not typically built with strong fortifications as were castles, many manor-houses were fortified and they were often enclosed within walls or ditches which often also included agricultural buildings. The primary feature of the house was its great hall. A late 16th-century transformation produced many of the smaller Renaissance châteaux of France, the Tudor period of stability in England saw the building of the first of the unfortified great houses, for example Sutton Place in Surrey, circa 1521. During the second half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and under her successor King James I the first mansions designed by architects not by mere masons or builders, began to make their appearance. Such houses as Burghley House, Longleat House, and Hatfield House are among the best known of this period, nearly every large mediaeval manor house had its own deer-park adjoining, emparked by royal licence, which served primarily as a store of food in the form of venison. Within these licensed parks deer could not be hunted by royalty and this gave them more privacy and space. Court was a suffix which came into use in the 16th century, the obvious origin of the suffix would appear to be that the building was the location where the manorial courts were held. True castles, when not royal castles, were generally the residences of feudal barons, the manor on which the castle was situated was termed the caput of the barony, thus every true ancient defensive castle was also the manor house of its own manor. The suffix -Park came into use in the 18th and 19th centuries, the usage is often a modern catch-all suffix for an old house on an estate, true manor or not

3.
Elizabethan architecture
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Elizabethan architecture is the term given to early Renaissance architecture in England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Historically, the period corresponds to the Cinquecento in Italy, the Early Renaissance in France, and the Plateresque style in Spain. In contrast to her father Henry VIII, Elizabeth commissioned no new palaces, and very few new churches were built. The reign of Elizabeth saw growing prosperity, and contemporaries remarked on the pace of secular building among the well-off, civic and institutional buildings were also becoming increasingly common. Renaissance architecture had achieved some influence in England during the reign of, and mainly in the palaces of, Henry VIII, unlike Henry, Elizabeth built no new palaces, instead encouraging her courtiers to build extravagantly and house her on her summer progresses. Both of these features can be seen on the towers of Wollaton Hall, often these buildings have an elaborate and fanciful roofline, hinting at the evolution from medieval fortified architecture. It was also at this time that the gallery became popular in English houses. This was apparently used for walking in, and a growing range of parlours and withdrawing rooms supplemented the main living room for the family. The great hall was now used by the servants. London, William Pickering – plates of architectural details

4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation

5.
Listed building
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A listed building or listed structure, in the United Kingdom, is one that has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The statutory bodies maintaining the list are Historic England in England, Cadw in Wales, Historic Scotland in Scotland, however, the preferred term in Ireland is protected structure. In England and Wales, an amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Owners of listed buildings are, in circumstances, compelled to repair and maintain them. When alterations are permitted, or when listed buildings are repaired or maintained, slightly different systems operate in each area of the United Kingdom, though the basic principles of the listing remain the same. It was the damage to caused by German bombing during World War II that prompted the first listing of buildings that were deemed to be of particular architectural merit. The listings were used as a means of determining whether a building should be rebuilt if it was damaged by bombing. Listing was first introduced into Northern Ireland under the Planning Order 1972, the listing process has since developed slightly differently in each part of the UK. In the UK, the process of protecting the historic environment is called ‘designation’. A heritage asset is a part of the environment that is valued because of its historic. Only some of these are judged to be important enough to have legal protection through designation. However, buildings that are not formally listed but still judged as being of heritage interest are still regarded as being a consideration in the planning process. Almost anything can be listed – it does not have to be a building, Buildings and structures of special historic interest come in a wide variety of forms and types, ranging from telephone boxes and road signs, to castles. Historic England has created twenty broad categories of structures, and published selection guides for each one to aid with assessing buildings and these include historical overviews and describe the special considerations for listing each category. Both Historic Scotland and Cadw produce guidance for owners, in England, to have a building considered for listing or delisting, the process is to apply to the secretary of state, this can be done by submitting an application form online to Historic England. The applicant does not need to be the owner of the building to apply for it to be listed, full information including application form guidance notes are on the Historic England website. Historic England assesses buildings put forward for listing or delisting and provides advice to the Secretary of State on the architectural, the Secretary of State, who may seek additional advice from others, then decides whether or not to list or delist the building. In England and Wales the authority for listing is granted to the Secretary of State by the Planning Act 1990, Listed buildings in danger of decay are listed on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register

6.
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
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The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is a London borough in East London, England. It lies around 9 miles east of Central London and it is an Outer London borough and the south is within the London Riverside section of the Thames Gateway, an area designated as a national priority for urban regeneration. At the 2011 census it had a population of 187,000, the local authority is Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council. Barking and Dagenham was one of six London boroughs to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, the borough has also been found to be the most unhappy place to live with the fewest new business incorporations. The borough was formed in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963 as the London Borough of Barking, the borough was renamed Barking and Dagenham in 1980. In 1994 the part of the Becontree estate in Redbridge was transferred to Barking, the area covered by Mayesbrook Park in the Borough was once part of the historic Manor of Jenkins, seat of the Fanshawe family. The borough borders the London Borough of Havering to the east with the River Rom forming part of the boundary and it borders the London Borough of Newham to the west with the River Roding forming much of the border. To the south is the River Thames which forms the boundary with the London Borough of Bexley. To the north the borough forms a thin protrusion between Havering and the London Borough of Redbridge in order to encompass Chadwell Heath,530 hectares within the borough are designated as part of the Metropolitan Green Belt. The boroughs major districts include Barking, Becontree and Dagenham and it borders five other London boroughs, Newham, Redbridge, Havering, and Greenwich and Bexley to the south of the Thames. Much of the housing of the borough was constructed by the London County Council during the period of 1921-1939. Since the decline of industries in the 1980s, employment has shifted towards service sector jobs. Much of the borough is within the London Riverside area of the Thames Gateway zone and is the site of house building. A £500 million budget has been earmarked for redevelopment of the principal district of Barking. In 1801, the parishes that form the modern borough had a total population of 1,937, and the area was characterised by farming, woodland. This last industry employed 1,370 men and boys by 1850, the population rose slowly through the 19th century, as the district became built up, and new industries developed around Barking. The population rose dramatically between 1921 and 1931, when the London County Council developed the Becontree Estate and this public housing development of 27,000 homes housed over 100,000 people, split between the then urban district councils of Ilford, Dagenham and Barking. People were rehoused from the slums of the East End, in 1931, the Ford Motor Company relocated to a 500 acres site at Dagenham, and in 1932 the District line was extended to Upminster, bringing further development to the area

7.
Greater London
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London, or Greater London, is a region of England which forms the administrative boundaries of London. It is organised into 33 local government districts, the 32 London boroughs, the Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The county of Greater London was created on 1 April 1965 through the London Government Act 1963, administratively, Greater London was first established as a sui generis council area under the Greater London Council between 1963 and 1986. The area was re-established as a region in 1994, and the Greater London Authority formed in 2000, the region covers 1,572 km2 and had a population of 8,174,000 at the 2011 census. In 2012, it had the highest GVA per capita in the United Kingdom at £37,232, the Greater London Built-up Area—used in some national statistics—is a measure of the continuous urban area of London, and therefore includes areas outside of the administrative region. The term Greater London has been and still is used to different areas in governance, statistics, history. In terms of ceremonial counties, London is divided into the small City of London, outside the limited boundaries of the City, a variety of arrangements has governed the wider area since 1855, culminating in the creation of the Greater London administrative area in 1965. The Greater London Arterial Road Programme was devised between 1913 and 1916, one of the larger early forms was the Greater London Planning Region, devised in 1927, which occupied 1,856 square miles and included 9 million people. The LCC pressed for an alteration in its boundaries soon after the end of the First World War, noting that within the Metropolitan, a Royal Commission on London Government was set up to consider the issue. The LCC proposed a vast new area for Greater London, with a boundary somewhere between the Metropolitan Police District and the home counties, protests were made at the possibility of including Windsor, Slough and Eton in the authority. The Commission made its report in 1923, rejecting the LCCs scheme, two minority reports favoured change beyond the amalgamation of smaller urban districts, including both smaller borough councils and a central authority for strategic functions. The London Traffic Act 1924 was a result of the Commission, Greater London originally had a two-tier system of local government, with the Greater London Council sharing power with the City of London Corporation and the 32 London Borough councils. The GLC was abolished in 1986 by the Local Government Act 1985 and its functions were devolved to the City Corporation and the London Boroughs, with some functions transferred to central government and joint boards. Greater London was used to form the London region of England in 1994, a referendum held in 1998 established a public will to recreate an upper tier of government to cover the region. The Greater London Authority, London Assembly and the directly elected Mayor of London were created in 2000 by the Greater London Authority Act 1999, in 2000, the outer boundary of the Metropolitan Police District was re-aligned to the Greater London boundary. The 2000 and 2004 mayoral elections were won by Ken Livingstone, the 2008 and 2012 elections were won by Boris Johnson. The 2016 election was won by Sadiq Khan, Greater London continues to include the most closely associated parts of the Greater London Urban Area and their historic buffers. Thus it includes, in five boroughs, significant parts of the Metropolitan Green Belt which protects designated greenfield land in a way to the citys parks

8.
Elizabethan
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The Elizabethan era is the epoch in English history marked by the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Historians often depict it as the age in English history. In terms of the century, the historian John Guy argues that England was economically healthier, more expansive. This golden age represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music, the era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of Englands past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home and it was also the end of the period when England was a separate realm before its royal union with Scotland. The Elizabethan Age may be viewed especially highly when considered in light of the failings of the periods preceding Elizabeths reign, the Protestant/Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, and parliament was not yet strong enough to challenge royal absolutism. England was also compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end under the weight of Spanish domination of the peninsula, France was embroiled in its own religious battles due to significant Spanish intervention, that would only be settled in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. The one great rival was Spain, which England clashed both in Europe and the Americas in skirmishes that exploded into the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604 and this drained both the English Exchequer and economy that had been so carefully restored under Elizabeths prudent guidance. English commercial and territorial expansion would be limited until the signing of the Treaty of London the year following Elizabeths death, economically, the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade, persistent theft of Spanish treasure, and the African slave trade. The Victorian era and the early 20th century idealised the Elizabethan era, the Encyclopædia Britannica maintains that he long reign of Elizabeth I, 1558–1603, was Englands Golden Age. Merry England, in love with life, expressed itself in music and literature, in architecture and this idealising tendency was shared by Britain and an Anglophilic America. In popular culture, the image of those adventurous Elizabethan seafarers was embodied in the films of Errol Flynn, in response and reaction to this hyperbole, modern historians and biographers have tended to take a more dispassionate view of the Tudor period. Elizabethan England was not particularly successful in a military sense during the period, having inherited a virtually bankrupt state from previous reigns, her frugal policies restored fiscal responsibility. Her fiscal restraint cleared the regime of debt by 1574, and this general peace and prosperity allowed the attractive developments that Golden Age advocates have stressed. The Elizabethan Age was also an age of plots and conspiracies, frequently political in nature, high officials in Madrid, Paris and Rome sought to kill Elizabeth, a Protestant, and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic. That would be a prelude to the recovery of England for Catholicism. In 1570, the Ridolfi plot was thwarted, in 1584, the Throckmorton Plot was discovered, after Francis Throckmorton confessed his involvement in a plot to overthrow the Queen and restore the Catholic Church in England

9.
Demesne
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In England royal demesne is the land held by the Crown, and ancient demesne is the legal term for the land held by the king at the time of the Domesday Book. The word derives from Old French demeine, ultimately from Latin dominus, lord, the word barton, which is an element found in many place-names, can refer to a demesne farm, it derives from Old English bere and ton. In this feudal system the demesne was all the land retained under his own management by a lord of the manor for his own use and it was not necessarily all contiguous to the manor house. A portion of the lands, called the lords waste, served as public roads and common pasture land for the lord. Most of the remainder of the land in the manor was sub-enfeoffed by the lord to others as sub-tenants, with the advent of the early modern period, demesne lands came to be cultivated by paid labourers. In times of inflation or debasement of coinage, the rent might come to represent a pittance, demesne lands that were leased out for a term of years remained demesne lands, though no longer in the occupation of the lord of the manor. The king made grants of large parcels of land under various forms of feudal tenure from his demesne. The land not so enfeoffed, for example royal manors administered by royal stewards and royal hunting forests, thus remained within the royal demesne. During the reign of King George III, Parliament appropriated most of the demesne, in exchange for a fixed annual sum thenceforth payable to the monarch. The position of the estate of Windsor, still occupied by the monarch and never alienated since 1066. Since the demesne surrounded the principal seat of the lord, it came to be used of any proprietary territory. A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases

10.
Barking Abbey
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Barking Abbey is a former royal monastery located in Barking, in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. It has been described as one of the most important nunneries in the country, originally established in the 7th century, from the late 10th century the abbey followed the Rule of St. Benedict. The abbey had an endowment and sizable income but suffered severely after 1377, when the River Thames flooded around 720 acres of the abbeys land. Despite this, at the time of the dissolution it was still the third wealthiest nunnery in England, the abbey continued to operate for almost 900 years, until its closure in 1539, as part of King Henry VIIIs Dissolution of the Monasteries. During its existence, the abbey had many notable abbesses including several saints, former queens, the abbess of Barking held precedence over all other abbesses in England. The ruined remains of Barking Abbey now form part of an open space known as Abbey Green. Barking Abbey was one of two founded in the 7th century by Saint Erkenwald. Erkenwald founded Chertsey Abbey for himself, and Barking Abbey for his sister Saint Ethelburga, Erkenwald and Ethelburga were of royal ancestry and were born in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey. It is said Ethelburga chose to become a nun to avoid having to marry King Edwin of Northumbria, however, this seems doubtful and there may have been confusion between Ethelburga and Æthelburh of Kent. Either way, Ethelburgas brother Erkenwald founded Barking Abbey specifically for her, Ethelburga served as the Abbeys first abbess. Saint Hildelitha, a nun brought from abroad to teach Ethelburga, Erkenwald himself would die at the abbey in 693, although his body was taken to Chertsey Abbey for burial. The abbey was endowed by the East Saxon Princes, who came from the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of the East Saxons/Kingdom of Essex, the abbey was initially dedicated to Saint Mary. However, it was dedicated to both Saint Mary and Saint Ethelburga. Saint Wulfhilda became abbess of Barking Abbey during the 10th century, Wulfhilda had grown up at Wilton Abbey, Wiltshire. King Edgar the Peaceful fell in love with Wulfhilda at Wilton, eventually Edgar tried to entrap Wulfhilda, getting her aunt, Abbess Wenflaeda of Wherwell to fake an illness and summon Wulfhilda, Edgar was the one waiting when Wulfhila arrived. On arriving, Wulfhilda found his fervour so alarming that she fled, leaving her sleeve in his hand, Wulfhilda pursued her ambition and became a nun. King Edgar then created her Abbess of Barking and donated considerable estates to Barking Abbey, Wulfhilda herself donated 20 villages to the abbey and established another monastery at Horton in Kent. King Edgars eventual queen, Ælfthryth became jealous of Wulfhilda, Wulfhilda was later restored by Edgars and Ælfthryths son, King Æthelred the Unready

11.
Dissolution of the Monasteries
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Although the policy was originally envisaged as increasing the regular income of the Crown, much former monastic property was sold off to fund Henrys military campaigns in the 1540s. Professor George W. Bernard argues, The dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. one adult man in fifty was in religious orders. Very few English houses had been founded later than the end of the 13th century, there was a Medieval proverb in England that said if the Abbot of Glastonbury married the Abbess of Shaftesbury, the heir would have more land than the King of England. The 200 houses of friars in England and Wales constituted a distinct wave of foundations almost all occurring in the 13th century. Friaries, for the most part, were concentrated in urban areas, however, the religious changes in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI were of a different nature from those taking place in Germany, Bohemia, France, Scotland and Geneva. Bernard says there was concern in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries about the condition of the monasteries. Pastoral care was seen as more important and vital than the monastic focus on contemplation, prayer. English monasticism in the 1530s may have faced grave and urgent problems, Henry wanted to change this, and in November 1529 Parliament passed Acts reforming apparent abuses in the English Church. These Acts sought to demonstrate that establishing royal jurisdiction over the Church would ensure progress in religious reformation where papal authority had been insufficient, the monasteries were next in line. The stories of monastic impropriety, vice and excess that were to be collected by Thomas Cromwells visitors may have been biased and exaggerated. Levels of monastic debt were increasing, and average numbers of professed religious were falling, only a minority of houses could now support the twelve or thirteen professed religious usually regarded as the minimum necessary to maintain the full canonical hours of the Divine Office. Extensive monastic complexes dominated English towns of any size, but most were less than half full, renaissance princes throughout Europe were facing severe financial difficulties due to sharply rising expenditures, especially to pay for armies, fighting ships and fortifications. Most tended, sooner or later, to resort to plundering monastic wealth, protestant princes would justify this by claiming divine authority, Catholic princes would obtain the agreement and connivance of the Papacy. Monastic wealth, regarded everywhere as excessive and idle, offered a standing temptation for cash-strapped secular, in terms of popular esteem however, the balance tilted the other way. By the time Henry VIII turned his mind to the business of monastery reform, the first case was that of the so-called Alien Priories. As a result of the Norman Conquest some French religious orders held substantial property through their daughter monasteries in England, some of these were merely granges, agricultural estates with a single foreign monk in residence to supervise things, others were rich foundations in their own right. Such estates were a source of income for the Crown in its French wars. If the property with which a house had been endowed by its founder were to be confiscated or surrendered, then the house ceased to exist, whether its members continued in the religious life or not

12.
Dendrochronology
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Dendrochronology is the scientific method of dating tree rings to the exact year they were formed in order to analyze atmospheric conditions during different periods in history. Dendrochronology is useful for determining the timing of events and rates of change in the environment and also in works of art and architecture, such as old panel paintings on wood, buildings and it is also used in radiocarbon dating to calibrate radiocarbon ages. New growth in trees occurs in a layer of cells near the bark, a trees growth rate changes in a predictable pattern throughout the year in response to seasonal climate changes, resulting in visible growth rings. Each ring marks a complete cycle of seasons, or one year, as of 2013, the oldest tree-ring measurements in the Northern Hemisphere extend back 13,900 years. Dendrochronology derives from Ancient Greek, δένδρον, meaning tree limb, χρόνος, meaning time, and -λογία, the Greek botanist Theophrastus first mentioned that the wood of trees has rings. In his Trattato della Pittura, Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to mention that trees form rings annually, in 1737, French investigators Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau and Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon examined the effect of growing conditions on the shape of tree rings. They found that in 1709, a severe winter produced a distinctly dark tree ring, the English polymath Charles Babbage proposed using dendrochronology to date the remains of trees in peat bogs or even in geological strata. During the latter half of the century, the scientific study of tree rings. In 1859, the German-American Jacob Kuechler used crossdating to examine oaks in order to study the record of climate in western Texas, in 1866, the German botanist, entomologist, and forester Julius Ratzeburg observed the effects on tree rings of defoliation caused by insect infestations. By 1882, this observation was already appearing in forestry textbooks, in the 1870s, the Dutch astronomer Jacobus C. Kapteyn was using crossdating to reconstruct the climates of the Netherlands, in 1881, the Swiss-Austrian forester Arthur von Seckendorff-Gudent was using crossdating. From 1869 to 1901, Robert Hartig, a German professor of forest pathology, wrote a series of papers on the anatomy, in 1892, the Russian physicist Fedor Nikiforovich Shvedov wrote that he had used patterns found in tree rings to predict droughts in 1882 and 1891. During the first half of the 20th century, the astronomer A. E. Douglass founded the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Growth rings, also referred to as tree rings or annual rings, growth rings are the result of new growth in the vascular cambium, a layer of cells near the bark that is classified as a lateral meristem, this growth in diameter is known as secondary growth. Visible rings result from the change in speed through the seasons of the year, thus, critical for the title method. If the bark of the tree has been removed in a particular area, the rings are more visible in temperate zones, where the seasons differ more markedly. The inner portion of a ring is formed early in the growing season, when growth is comparatively rapid and is known as early wood. Many trees in temperate zones make one growth ring each year, hence, for the entire period of a trees life, a year-by-year record or ring pattern is formed that reflects the age of the tree and the climatic conditions in which the tree grew

13.
Lead
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Lead is a chemical element with atomic number 82 and symbol Pb. When freshly cut, it is bluish-white, it tarnishes to a dull gray upon exposure to air and it is a soft, malleable, and heavy metal with a density exceeding that of most common materials. Lead has the second-highest atomic number of the stable elements. Lead is a relatively unreactive post-transition metal and its weak metallic character is illustrated by its amphoteric nature and tendency to form covalent bonds. Compounds of lead are found in the +2 oxidation state. Exceptions are mostly limited to organolead compounds, like the lighter members of the group, lead exhibits a tendency to bond to itself, it can form chains, rings, and polyhedral structures. Lead is easily extracted from its ores and was known to people in Western Asia. A principal ore of lead, galena, often bears silver, Lead production declined after the fall of Rome and did not reach comparable levels again until the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, global production of lead is about ten million tonnes annually, Lead has several properties that make it useful, high density, low melting point, ductility, and relative inertness to oxidation. In the late 19th century, lead was recognized as poisonous, Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates in soft tissues and bones, damaging the nervous system and causing brain disorders and, in mammals, blood disorders. A lead atom has 82 electrons, arranged in a configuration of 4f145d106s26p2. The combined first and second ionization energies—the total energy required to remove the two 6p electrons—is close to that of tin, leads upper neighbor in group 14. This is unusual since ionization energies generally fall going down a group as an elements outer electrons become more distant from the nucleus, the similarity is caused by the lanthanide contraction—the decrease in element radii from lanthanum to lutetium, and the relatively small radii of the elements after hafnium. The contraction is due to shielding of the nucleus by the lanthanide 4f electrons. The combined first four ionization energies of lead exceed those of tin, for this reason lead, unlike tin, mostly forms compounds in which it has an oxidation state of +2, rather than +4. Relativistic effects, which become particularly prominent at the bottom of the periodic table, as a result, the 6s electrons of lead become reluctant to participate in bonding, a phenomenon called the inert pair effect. A related outcome is that the distance between nearest atoms in crystalline lead is unusually long, the lighter group 14 elements form stable or metastable allotropes having the tetrahedrally coordinated and covalently bonded diamond cubic structure. The energy levels of their outer s- and p-orbitals are close enough to allow mixing into four hybrid sp3 orbitals

14.
Gunpowder Plot
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Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed. Fawkes, who had 10 years of experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives. The plot was revealed to the authorities in a letter sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle. During a search of the House of Lords at about midnight on 4 November 1605, most of the conspirators fled from London as they learned of the plots discovery, trying to enlist support along the way. Several made a stand against the pursuing Sheriff of Worcester and his men at Holbeche House, in the battle, Catesby was one of those shot. At their trial on 27 January 1606, eight of the survivors, including Fawkes, were convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, details of the assassination attempt were allegedly known by the principal Jesuit of England, Father Henry Garnet. Although he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death, doubt has been cast on how much he knew of the plot. As its existence was revealed to him through confession, Garnet was prevented from informing the authorities by the absolute confidentiality of the confessional, although anti-Catholic legislation was introduced soon after the plots discovery, many important and loyal Catholics retained high office during King James Is reign. Between 1533 and 1540, the Tudor King Henry VIII took control of the English Church from Rome, English Catholics struggled in a society dominated by the newly separate and increasingly Protestant Church of England. The penalties for refusal were severe, fines were imposed for recusancy, Catholicism became marginalised, but despite the threat of torture or execution, priests continued to practise their faith in secret. Queen Elizabeth, unmarried and childless, steadfastly refused to name an heir, many Catholics believed that her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, was the legitimate heir to the English throne, but she was executed for treason in 1587. In the months before Elizabeths death on 24 March 1603, Cecil prepared the way for James to succeed her, some exiled Catholics favoured Philip II of Spains daughter, Infanta Isabella, as Elizabeths successor. More moderate Catholics looked to Jamess and Elizabeths cousin Arbella Stuart, despite competing claims to the English throne, the transition of power following Elizabeths death went smoothly. Jamess succession was announced by a proclamation from Cecil on 24 March, leading papists, rather than causing trouble as anticipated, reacted to the news by offering their enthusiastic support for the new monarch. Jesuit priests, whose presence in England was punishable by death, also demonstrated their support for James, for decades, the English had lived under a monarch who refused to provide an heir, but James arrived with a family and a future line of succession. His wife, Anne of Denmark, was the daughter of a king, Jamess attitude towards Catholics was more moderate than that of his predecessor, perhaps even tolerant. During the late 16th century, Catholics made several assassination attempts against Protestant rulers in Europe and in England, including plans to poison Elizabeth I. Much of the rather nervous James Is political writing was concerned with the threat of Catholic assassination and refutation of the argument that faith did not need to be kept with heretics

15.
Historic England
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Historic England is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with protecting the environment of England by preserving and listing historic buildings, ancient monuments. The body was created by the National Heritage Act 1983. Historic England has a remit to and complements the work of Natural England which aims to protect the natural environment. Historic England inherits English Heritages position as the UK governments statutory adviser and this includes archaeology on land and under water, historic buildings sites and areas, designated landscapes and the historic elements of the wider landscape. It monitors and reports on the state of Englands heritage and publishes the annual the Heritage at Risk survey which is one of the UK Governments Official statistics and it is tasked to secure the preservation and enhancement of the man-made heritage of England for the benefit of future generations. Giving grants national and local organisations for the conservation of buildings, monuments. In 2013/14 over £13 million worth of grants were made to support heritage buildings, advising central UK government on which English heritage assets are nationally important and should be protected by designation. Administering and maintaining the register of Englands listed buildings, scheduled monuments, registered battlefields, conservation areas and protected parks and this is published as an online resource as The National Heritage List for England. Advising local authorities on managing changes to the most important parts of heritage, providing expertise through advice, training and guidance to improve the standards and skills of people working in heritage, practical conservation and access to resources. In 2009–2010 it trained around 200 professionals working in local authorities, consulting and collaborating with other heritage bodies, local and national planning organisations e. g. It is not responsible for approving alterations to listed buildings, the management of listed buildings is the responsibility of local planning authorities and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It also owns the National Heritage Collection of nationally important historic sites, however they do not run these sites as this function is instead carried out by the English Heritage Trust under licence until 2023. Britain from Above, presents the unique Aerofilms collection of photographs from 1919-1953. Images of England website Heritage Explorer, Education site for teachers Department for Culture Media and Sport

16.
List of museums in London
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This is a list of museums in London, the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. It also includes university and non-profit art galleries, to use the sortable table, click on the icons at the top of each column to sort that column in alphabetical order, click again for reverse alphabetical order. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport publishes monthly visitor figures for the public museums and galleries which it sponsors. The most popular London museum in the sector is The Sherlock Holmes Museum. Tate Modern is widely reported to attract the visitors of the two, but it is not clear whether it received more visitors than the British Museum on its own. The UK Government publishes visitor figures for its own establishments, the majority of government-funded museums stopped charging admission fees in 2001 and, although this was challenged in 2007, this has remained the case. Following the removal of admission charges, attendances at London museums increased, albertopolis Museum Mile, London The London Museums of Health & Medicine Culture of London Category, Tourist attractions in London Londons best unsung museums – Time Out London

17.
British Library
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The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the second largest library in the world by number of items catalogued. It holds well over 150 million items from many countries, as a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media. The Librarys collections include around 14 million books, along with holdings of manuscripts. In addition to receiving a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland, the Library adds some three million items every year occupying 9.6 kilometres of new shelf space. Prior to 1973, the Library was part of the British Museum, the Euston Road building is classified as a Grade I listed building, of exceptional interest for its architecture and history. The British Library was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972. Prior to this, the library was part of the British Museum. In 1983, the Library absorbed the National Sound Archive, which holds many sound and video recordings, with over a million discs, the core of the Librarys historical collections is based on a series of donations and acquisitions from the 18th century, known as the foundation collections. From 1997 to 2009 the main collection was housed in this new building. Construction work on the Newspaper Storage Building was completed in 2013, the collection has now been split between the St Pancras and Boston Spa sites. The British Library Document Supply Service and the Librarys Document Supply Collection is based on the site in Boston Spa. Collections housed in Yorkshire, comprising low-use material and the newspaper and Document Supply collections, the Library previously had a book storage depot in Woolwich, south-east London, which is no longer in use. The new library was designed specially for the purpose by the architect Colin St John Wilson, facing Euston Road is a large piazza that includes pieces of public art, such as large sculptures by Eduardo Paolozzi and Antony Gormley. It is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century, in December 2009 a new storage building at Boston Spa was opened by Rosie Winterton. The building was Grade I listed on 1 August 2015, in England, Legal Deposit can be traced back to at least 1610. The other five libraries are, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the University Library at Cambridge, the Trinity College Library at Dublin, in 2003 the Ipswich MP Chris Mole introduced a Private Members Bill which became the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003. The Act extends United Kingdom legal deposit requirements to electronic documents, such as CD-ROMs, the Library also holds the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections which include the India Office Records and materials in the languages of Asia and of north and north-east Africa

18.
British Museum
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The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally a museum of art objects and antiquities. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish-born British physician, on 7 June 1753, King George II gave his formal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public, sloanes collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary, the body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost. With the acquisition of Montagu House the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts. A list of donations to the Museum, dated 31 January 1784, in the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805. In 1816 these masterpieces of art, were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815, the Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an extension to the Museum. For the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it, and put forward plans for todays quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the Kings Library Gallery began in 1823, the extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. The Museum became a site as Sir Robert Smirkes grand neo-classical building gradually arose

19.
Geffrye Museum
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The Geffrye Museum of the Home is located in Shoreditch, London. The Museum explores home and home life from 1600 to the present day, named after Sir Robert Geffrye, a former Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Ironmongers Company, it is located on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, London. The museum is set in beautiful 18th-century Grade I-listed almshouses of the Ironmongers Company, surrounding the museum is a walled herb garden, and a series of period gardens which show how domestic gardens have changed over time. The herb and period gardens are open from 1 April to 31 October, inside the museum, evocative displays of London, middle-class living rooms and gardens illustrate homes and home life through the centuries, reflecting changes in society, behaviour, style and taste. The many aspects of home are brought to life through an imaginative and inspirational programme of special exhibitions, the museums popular Christmas Past exhibition is held annually each winter, with the eleven period rooms authentically decorated for the season. The museum has embarked on an ambitious £18. 1m development project - Unlocking the Geffrye

20.
Horniman Museum
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The Horniman Museum and Gardens is a British museum in Forest Hill, London, England. Commissioned in 1898, it opened in 1901 and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Arts and Crafts style and it is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and is constituted as a company and registered charity under English law. The museum was founded in 1901 by Frederick John Horniman, Frederick had inherited his fathers Hornimans Tea business, which by 1891 had become the worlds biggest tea trading business. In 1911, a building to the west of the main building, originally containing a lecture hall. This was also designed by Townsend, a new extension, opened in 2002, was designed by Allies and Morrison. The Horniman specialises in anthropology, natural history and musical instruments and has a collection of 350,000 objects, the ethnography and music collections have Designated status. One of its most famous exhibits is the collection of stuffed animals. It also has a noted for its unique layout. Composed of more than 117,000 individual tesserae, it measures 10 feet by 32 feet, the three figures on the far left represent Art, Poetry and Music, standing by a doorway symbolising birth, while the armed figure represents Endurance. The two kneeling figures represent Love and Hope, while the central figure symbolises Humanity, charity stands to the right bearing figs and wine, followed by white-haired Wisdom holding a staff, and a seated figure representing Meditation. Finally, a figure symbolising Resignation stands by the right-hand doorway, a 20-foot red cedar totem pole stands outside the museums main entrance. It was carved in 1985 as part of the American Arts Festival by Nathan Jackson, the carvings on the pole depict figures from Alaskan legend of a girl who married a bear, with an eagle at the top. There is also a pole in the Royal Albert Memorial museum in Exeter. It is displayed in their World Cultures galleries, the Horniman Museum contains the CUE building. This opened in 1996 and was designed by local architects Archetype using methods developed by Walter Segal, the building has a grass roof and was constructed from sustainable materials. Official website Forest Hill image gallery urban75 photo feature Review and Visitor Information for the Horniman Museum

21.
National Army Museum
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The National Army Museum is the British Armys central museum. It is located in the Chelsea district of central London, adjacent to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the museum is a non-departmental public body. The National Army Museum is usually open to the every day of the year from 10. 00am to 5. 30pm, except on 24–26 December and 1 January. Though the National Army Museum does hold a number of early objects. It also differs from the matter of the Imperial War Museum, another national museum in London. The National Army Museum was first conceived in the late 1950s, and owes its existence to the persistent hard work of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer and it was initially established in 1960 in temporary accommodation at the former No.1 Riding School at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The new building was completed ten years later and opened by the Queen on 11 November 1971, a large site was chosen near Marne Barracks, beside the A1, and in 2002 Simon Pierce of Austin-Smith, Lord was chosen as the new museums architect. However, funding and planning issues later led to the cancellation of the plan in 2003 and this redisplay concluded with the opening of the new permanent National Service gallery in October 2010, though a further phase of redevelopment followed from 2011 onwards. From 1 May 2014 until 30 March 2017 the museum was closed to the public for a major Heritage Lottery Fund-funded rebuilding programme, in early March 2017, the Queen reopened the Museum, marking the completion of the three-year renovation. The National Army Museum achieved devolved status as a public body in 1983 under terms of the National Heritage Act. The annual Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Defence, is administered by the Director of the Museum on behalf of the governing body and these previously included Butterflies and Bayonets, The Soldier as Collector Helmand, The Soldiers Story and War Boy, The Michael Foreman Exhibition. The 2010–2011 exhibition in this space was The Road to Kabul, British Armies in Afghanistan,1838 –1919 about the First, Second and Third Afghan Wars. These were replaced in May 2011 by a new gallery, again entitled Making of Britain 1066–1783, the Changing the World gallery told the story of the French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleonic Wars and British involvement in India from 1794 to 1904. This gallery was divided into two halves, the first half covered the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the War of 1812 and the Mysore Wars. Its exhibits included the helmet of Tipu Sultan and this half concluded with the Battle of Waterloo, illustrated by the Siborne model, the skeleton of Marengo and a diorama figure of Charles Ewart capturing a French eagle. The second half began with a Victorian Soldier Action Zone, a hands-on, interactive area for children, dealing with weapons and conditions of service for soldiers in the Victorian era. It then continued onto the British Army and British Indian Armys involvement in the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Zulu War, the display then concluded with a display on the Boer War on the corridor between the first and second floors. The gallery showed the part played in the First World War and Second World War by the armies of the United Kingdom and her empire and it began with recruitment for the First World War and ends with a display on the Partition of India

22.
National Gallery
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The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the century to 1900. The Gallery is a charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media. Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the collection is free of charge. It is among the most visited art museums in the world, after the Musée du Louvre, the British Museum, unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein, after that initial purchase the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which comprise two-thirds of the collection. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition, the present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832 to 1838. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, wilkinss building was often criticised for the perceived weaknesses of its design and for its lack of space, the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi, the current Director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi. The late 18th century saw the nationalisation of royal or princely art collections across mainland Europe, great Britain, however, did not emulate the continental model, and the British Royal Collection remains in the sovereigns possession today. In 1777 the British government had the opportunity to buy an art collection of international stature, the MP John Wilkes argued for the government to buy this invaluable treasure and suggested that it be housed in a noble gallery. The twenty-five paintings from that now in the Gallery, including NG1, have arrived by a variety of routes. This offer was declined and Bourgeois bequeathed the collection to his old school, Dulwich College, the collection opened in Britains first purpose-built public gallery, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, in 1814. The British Institution, founded in 1805 by a group of aristocratic connoisseurs, the members lent works to exhibitions that changed annually, while an art school was held in the summer months. However, as the paintings that were lent were often mediocre, some resented the Institution. One of the Institutions founding members, Sir George Beaumont, Bt, in 1823 another major art collection came on the market, which had been assembled by the recently deceased John Julius Angerstein. Angerstein was a Russian-born émigré banker based in London, his collection numbered 38 paintings, including works by Raphael, on 1 July 1823 George Agar Ellis, a Whig politician, proposed to the House of Commons that it purchase the collection. The appeal was given added impetus by Beaumonts offer, which came with two conditions, that the government buy Angersteins collection, and that a building was to be found

23.
National Portrait Gallery, London
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The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856, the gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martins Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then, the National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The gallery houses portraits of important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter. The collection includes photographs and caricatures as well as paintings, drawings, one of its best-known images is the Chandos portrait, the most famous portrait of William Shakespeare although there is some uncertainty about whether the painting actually is of the playwright. Not all of the portraits are exceptional artistically, although there are self-portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, some, such as the group portrait of the participants in the Somerset House Conference of 1604, are important historical documents in their own right. Portraits of living figures were allowed from 1969, the three people largely responsible for the founding of the National Portrait Gallery are commemorated with busts over the main entrance. At centre is Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope, with his supporters on either side, Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay and it was Stanhope who, in 1846 as a Member of Parliament, first proposed the idea of a National Portrait Gallery. It was not until his attempt, in 1856, this time from the House of Lords. With Queen Victorias approval, the House of Commons set aside a sum of £2000 to establish the gallery, as well as Stanhope and Macaulay, the founder Trustees included Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Ellesmere. It was the latter who donated the Chandos portrait to the nation as the gallerys first portrait, Carlyle became a trustee after the death of Ellesmere in 1857. For the first 40 years, the gallery was housed in locations in London. The first 13 years were spent at 29 Great George Street, there, the collection increased in size from 57 to 208 items, and the number of visitors from 5,300 to 34,500. In 1869, the moved to Exhibition Road and buildings managed by the Royal Horticultural Society. Following a fire in buildings, the collection was moved in 1885. This location was unsuitable due to its distance from the West End, condensation. Following calls for a new location to be found, the government accepted an offer of funds from the philanthropist William Henry Alexander, Alexander donated £60,000 followed by another £20,000, and also chose the architect, Ewan Christian

24.
Natural History Museum, London
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The Natural History Museum in London is a museum of natural history that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum, the Natural History Museums main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections, botany, the museum is a world-renowned centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, the museum is recognised as the pre-eminent centre of natural history and research of related fields in the world. Although commonly referred to as the Natural History Museum, it was known as British Museum until 1992. Originating from collections within the British Museum, the landmark Alfred Waterhouse building was built and opened by 1881, the Darwin Centre is a more recent addition, partly designed as a modern facility for storing the valuable collections. Like other publicly funded museums in the United Kingdom, the Natural History Museum does not charge an admission fee. The museum is a charity and a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge is a patron of the museum, there are approximately 850 staff at the Museum. The two largest strategic groups are the Public Engagement Group and Science Group and this purchase was funded by a lottery. Sloanes collection, which included dried plants, and animal and human skeletons, was housed in Montagu House, Bloomsbury, in 1756. Most of the Sloane collection had disappeared by the decades of the nineteenth century. Dr George Shaw sold many specimens to the Royal College of Surgeons and had periodic cremations of material in the grounds of the museum and his successors also applied to the trustees for permission to destroy decayed specimens. In 1833 the Annual Report states that, of the 5,500 insects listed in the Sloane catalogue, the inability of the natural history departments to conserve its specimens became notorious, the Treasury refused to entrust it with specimens collected at the governments expense. The huge collection of the conchologist Hugh Cuming was acquired by the museum and that collection is said never to have recovered. The Principal Librarian at the time was Antonio Panizzi, his contempt for the history departments. The general public was not encouraged to visit the Museums natural history exhibits, in 1835 to a Select Committee of Parliament, Sir Henry Ellis said this policy was fully approved by the Principal Librarian and his senior colleagues. Many of these faults were corrected by the palaeontologist Richard Owen and his changes led Bill Bryson to write that by making the Natural History Museum an institution for everyone, Owen transformed our expectations of what museums are for

25.
Royal Air Force Museum London
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It is part of the Royal Air Force Museum, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Defence and a registered charity. A second collection of exhibits, plus aircraft restoration facilities, is housed at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, the museum was officially opened at the Colindale London site on 15 November 1972 by Queen Elizabeth II. The hangars housed 36 aircraft at opening, over the years, the collection increased, and aircraft not on display at Hendon were stored or displayed at smaller local RAF station museums. The first Director of the Museum was Dr John Tanner, who retired in 1987, in 1988, Dr Michael A. Fopp was appointed Director General of all three sites operated by the Museum. Retired Air Vice-Marshal Peter Dye replaced Fopp as Director General on 9 June 2010, in October 2014, it was announced that Maggie Appleton was to be appointed as CEO of the museum. Appleton took up the new role in January 2015, a departure from the role of Director General which was held by Peter Dye until his retirement in late 2014. It also includes the only complete Hawker Typhoon and the only Boulton Paul Defiant in the world, recently added to the museum is a Consolidated B-24 Liberator, which was moved to Hendon from Cosford. It was presented to the museum by the Indian Air Force, in exchange, a Vickers Valiant was sent to Cosford to become part of the new Cold War exhibition. In 2009 the museum took delivery of a FE2b World War I bomber, there is a large car park at the site, and reasonable public transport links, with Colindale tube station around a 10-minute walk away. The Battle of Britain Museum was opened by HM The Queen Mother in November 1978, the building itself must be distinguished enough to be worthy of commemorating such a feat of arms and large enough to accommodate the necessary collections and displays. The government has provided the Hendon site but, in the economic circumstances, has declined to meet any part of the capital cost. Since the Museum must be self-supporting, a Fund of £2 millions is necessary, the whole will be designed to constitute a permanent memorial to the men, women and machines involved in the great battle of 1940. Signed, Douglas Bader £1. 7m was raised to pay for the new museum within a year and this created a dedicated museum hall in which a unique collection of aircraft were displayed, along with other objects and artefacts. In April 2009, work began on The Battle of Britain Hall to improve lighting conditions and this new form of energy-saving lighting can change colour and light intensity while still being cheaper to run. It is kinder to the exhibits because it does not emanate UV light, works were completed in August 2009. Unable to secure funding for the ambitious Beacon project, the proposal lapsed, six years later, on 3 October 2016 the Battle of Britain Hall at Hendon was permanently closed after being in existence for some 38 years. The collection has been dispersed and the Battle of Britain will be presented across both the London and Cosford sites as part of other themed exhibitions within the RAF Centenarys celebrations

26.
Sir John Soane's Museum
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Sir John Soanes Museum was formerly the home of the neo-classical architect John Soane. It holds many drawings and models of Soanes projects and the collections of paintings, drawings, the museum is located in Holborn, London, adjacent to Lincolns Inn Fields. It is a public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media. Soane demolished and rebuilt three houses in succession on the side of Lincolns Inn Fields. 12, externally a plain brick house, after becoming Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy in 1806, Soane purchased No. 13, the next door, today the Museum. In 1808–09 he constructed his office and museum on the site of the former stable block at the back. In 1812 he rebuilt the front part of the site, adding a projecting Portland Stone facade to the basement, ground and first floor levels, originally this formed three open loggias, but Soane glazed the arches during his lifetime. Once he had moved into No,13, Soane rented out his former home at No.12. After completing No.13, Soane set about treating the building as an architectural laboratory, in 1823, when he was over 70, he purchased a third house, No. 14, which he rebuilt in 1823–24 and this project allowed him to construct a picture gallery, linked to No.13, on the former stable block of No.14. The front main part of this house was treated as a separate dwelling and let as an investment. When he died No.14 was bequeathed to his family, the Museum was established during Soanes own lifetime by a Private Act of Parliament in 1833, which took effect on Soanes death in 1837. The Act required that No.13 be maintained as nearly as possible as it was left at the time of Soanes death, and he also wrote an anonymous, defamatory piece for the Sunday papers about Sir John, calling him a cheat, a charlatan and a copyist. The Museums Trustees remained completely independent, relying only on Soanes original endowment, since that date the Museum has received an annual Grant-in-Aid from the British Government. The Soane Museum is now a centre for the study of architecture. In 1997 the Trustees purchased the house at No.14 with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund. The acquisition of No.14 enabled the Museum, under its new Director, Tim Knox, to embark on Opening up the Soane and it is funded by the Monument Trust, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Soane Foundation in New York, and other private trusts

27.
Wallace Collection
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The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, the Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body. The Collection numbers nearly 5,500 objects and is best known for its quality and breadth of eighteenth-century French paintings, Sèvres porcelain and French furniture. His father Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, brother of Queen Jane Seymour, had started building the palatial Somerset House on the Strand as his townhouse, the present House in Manchester Square was the townhouse of a later branch of the family. The Wallace Restaurant is now run by Peyton and Byrne as a French-style brasserie, the Wallace Collections Old Master paintings represent some of the finest works of art in the world, executed by most of the leading artists of their period. The paintings include important works from all periods between the fourteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, strengths of the collection include examples by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Canaletto, Gainsborough, François Boucher, Fragonard, Murillo, Titian, Poussin and Velázquez. The inventory of pictures, watercolours and drawings comprises all the major European schools. M. W, the Wallace Collection contains the richest and most distinguished museum collections of eighteenth-century Sèvres porcelain in the world. It includes 137 vases,80 tea wares,67 useful wares,3 biscuit figures and 130 plaques, one highlight of the collection is the major collection of furniture attributed to André-Charles Boulle, perhaps the best-known cabinet-maker ever to have lived. Joseph Baumhauer –1 item, Bas darmoire, c, 1765–1770, André-Charles Boulle –22 items, Armoire, c. 1700–10, Cabinet avec son pied, c,1667, Cartonnier et pendule, c.1715, Commode, c. 1710, Paire de grande table, c,1713, Paire de coffre de toilette, c. 1720–25, Table à mettre dans un trumeau, c,1705, Martin Carlin –4 items, Paire de Encoignures, c. 1783, Adrien Delorme –2 items, Paire de bibliothèque basse Étienne Doirat –1 item, Commode,1720, Étienne Levasseur –5 items, Grande Bibliothèque, c. 1775, Paire de bibliothèque basse, c.1775 Paire de meubles à hauteur deappui, c.1775 Alexandre-Jean Oppenord –3 items, Bureau plat,1710, Commode, c. 1710, Jean Henri Riesener –10 items, Commode, delivered to Marie-Antoinettes cabinet intérieur de la reine at Versailles,1780, Commode, delivered to Marie-Antoinette for Chateau de Marly, c. 1782, Encoignure, delivered to Marie-Antoinettes cabinet intérieur at Versailles,1783, Secrétaire à abattant, delivered to Marie-Antoinettes cabinet intérieur at Versailles, c. 1783, Secrétaire à abattant, delivered to Marie-Antoinettes Petit Triannon at Versailles,1783, Secrétaire à abattant, delivered to Marie-Antoinettes cabinet intérieur at Versailles, c. 1780, Bureau à cylindre, delivered to the comte dOrsay for the Hôtel dOrsay, 1785–90 Media related to Wallace Collection at Wikimedia Commons Official website

28.
Imperial War Museums
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Imperial War Museums is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain, the museums remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the aims to provide for, and to encourage. Originally housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, the museum opened to the public in 1920. The outbreak of the Second World War saw the museum expand both its collections and its terms of reference, but in the period, the museum entered a period of decline. The 1960s saw the museum redevelop its Southwark building, now referred to as Imperial War Museum London, during the 1970s, the museum began to expand onto other sites. The first, in 1976, was an airfield in Cambridgeshire now referred to as IWM Duxford. In 1978, the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Belfast became a branch of the museum, in 1984, the Cabinet War Rooms, an underground wartime command centre, was opened to the public. From the 1980s onwards, the museums Bethlem building underwent a series of multimillion-pound redevelopments, finally,2002 saw the opening of IWM North in Trafford, Greater Manchester, the fifth branch of the museum and the first in the north of England. In 2011, the museum rebranded itself as IWM, standing for Imperial War Museums, the museum is funded by government grants, charitable donations, and revenue generation through commercial activity such as retailing, licensing, and publishing. General admission is free to IWM London and IWM North, the museum is an exempt charity under the Charities Act 1993 and a non-departmental public body under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. As of January 2012, the Chairman of the Trustees is Sir Francis Richards, since October 2008, the museums Director General has been Diane Lees. On 27 February 1917 Sir Alfred Mond, a Liberal MP and First Commissioner of Works and this proposal was accepted by the War Cabinet on 5 March 1917 and the decision announced in The Times on 26 March. A committee was established, chaired by Mond, to oversee the collection of material to be exhibited in the new museum, there was an early appreciation of the need for exhibits to reflect personal experience in order to prevent the collections becoming dead relics. Sir Martin Conway, the Museums first Director General, said that exhibits must be vitalised by contributions expressive of the action, the experiences, the valour and the endurance of individuals. The museums first curator and secretary was Charles ffoulkes, who had previously been curator of the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London, in July 1917 Mond made a visit to the Western Front in order to study how best to organise the museums growing collection. While in France he met French government ministers, and Field Marshal Haig, in December 1917 the name was changed to the Imperial War Museum after a resolution from the India and Dominions Committee of the museum. The museum was opened by The King at the Crystal Palace on 9 June 1920, shortly afterwards the Imperial War Museum Act 1920 was passed and established a Board of Trustees to oversee the governance of the museum

29.
Churchill War Rooms
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The Churchill War Rooms is a museum in London and one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. Construction of the Cabinet War Rooms, located beneath the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster and they became operational in August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war in Europe. They remained in operation throughout the Second World War, before being abandoned in August 1945 after the surrender of Japan, after the war the historic value of the Cabinet War Rooms was recognised. In the early 1980s the Imperial War Museum was asked to take over the administration of the site, the museum was reopened in 2005 following a major redevelopment as the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, but in 2010 this was shortened to the Churchill War Rooms. The building now accommodates HM Treasury, work to convert the basement of the New Public Offices began, under the supervision of Ismay and Sir Leslie Hollis, in June 1938. The work included installing communications and broadcasting equipment, sound-proofing, ventilation, as ultimate authority lay with the civilian government the Cabinet, or a smaller War Cabinet, would require close access to senior military figures. This implied accommodation close to the armed forces Central War Room, in May 1939 it was decided that the Cabinet would be housed within the Central War Room. During its operational life two of the Cabinet War Rooms were of particular importance, once operational, the facilitys Map Room was in constant use and manned around the clock by officers of the Royal Navy, British army and Royal Air Force. These officers were responsible for producing a daily intelligence summary for the King, Prime Minister, the other key room was the Cabinet Room. Until the opening of the Battle of France, which began on 10 May 1940, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlains war cabinet met at the War Rooms only once, in October 1939. Following Winston Churchills appointment as Prime Minister, Churchill visited the Cabinet Room in May 1940 and declared, in total 115 Cabinet meetings were held at the Cabinet War Rooms, the last on 28 March 1945, when the German V-weapon bombing campaign came to an end. Up to 5 feet thick, the Slab was progressively extended, two other notable rooms include the Transatlantic Telephone Room and Churchills office-bedroom. From 1943, a SIGSALY code-scrambling encrypted telephone was installed in the basement of Selfridges and this enabled Churchill to speak securely with American President Roosevelt in Washington, with the first conference taking place on 15 July 1943. Later extensions were installed to both 10 Downing Street and the specially constructed Transatlantic Telephone Room within the Cabinet War Rooms, Churchills office-bedroom included BBC broadcasting equipment, Churchill made four wartime broadcasts from the Cabinet War Rooms. His daughter Mary Soames often slept in the allocated to Mrs Churchill. After the end of the war, the Cabinet War Rooms became redundant and were abandoned and their maintenance became the responsibility of the Ministry of Works. Even so, a tour was organised for journalists on 17 March, with members of the press being welcomed by Lord Ismay and shown around the Rooms by their custodian, Mr. George Rance. While the Rooms were not open to the public, they could be accessed by appointment

30.
HMS Belfast (C35)
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HMS Belfast is a museum ship, originally a Royal Navy light cruiser, permanently moored on the River Thames in London, England, and operated by the Imperial War Museum. Construction of Belfast, the first Royal Navy ship to be named after the city of Northern Ireland and one of ten Town-class cruisers. She was launched on St Patricks Day 1938, commissioned in early August 1939 shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Belfast was initially part of the British naval blockade against Germany. In November 1939, Belfast struck a German mine and spent more than two years undergoing extensive repairs, Belfast returned to action in November 1942 with improved firepower, radar equipment, and armour. In June 1944, Belfast took part in Operation Overlord supporting the Normandy landings, in June 1945, Belfast was redeployed to the Far East to join the British Pacific Fleet, arriving shortly before the end of the Second World War. Belfast saw further action in 1950–52 during the Korean War. A number of further overseas commissions followed before Belfast entered reserve in 1963, in 1967, efforts were initiated to avert Belfasts expected scrapping and preserve her as a museum ship. A joint committee of the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, in 1971, the government decided against preservation, prompting the formation of the private HMS Belfast Trust to campaign for her preservation. The efforts of the Trust were successful, and the government transferred the ship to the Trust in July 1971, brought to London, she was moored on the River Thames near Tower Bridge in the Pool of London. Opened to the public in October 1971, Belfast became a branch of the Imperial War Museum in 1978, a popular tourist attraction, Belfast receives over a quarter of a million visitors per year. The ship was closed to visitors following an accident in November 2011, Belfast is a cruiser of the second Town class. The Admiraltys requirement called for a 9, 000-ton cruiser, sufficiently armoured to withstand a hit from an 8-inch shell, capable of 32 knots. Seaplanes carried aboard would enable shipping lanes to be patrolled over an area. Under the Director of Naval Construction the new design evolved during 1933, the lead ship of the new class, the 9, 100-ton HMS Southampton, and her sister HMS Newcastle, were ordered under the 1933 estimates. Three more cruisers were built to design, with a further three ships built to a slightly larger 9, 400-ton design in 1935–36. In May 1936 the Admiralty decided to fit triple turrets, whose improved design would permit an increase in deck armour and this modified design became the 10, 000-ton Edinburgh subclass, named after Belfasts sister ship HMS Edinburgh. Belfast was ordered from Harland and Wolff on 21 September 1936 and her expected cost was £2,141,514, of which the guns cost £75,000 and the aircraft £66,500. She was launched on Saint Patricks Day,17 March 1938, by Anne Chamberlain, the launch was filmed by Pathe News

31.
Imperial War Museum
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Imperial War Museums is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain, the museums remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the aims to provide for, and to encourage. Originally housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, the museum opened to the public in 1920. The outbreak of the Second World War saw the museum expand both its collections and its terms of reference, but in the period, the museum entered a period of decline. The 1960s saw the museum redevelop its Southwark building, now referred to as Imperial War Museum London, during the 1970s, the museum began to expand onto other sites. The first, in 1976, was an airfield in Cambridgeshire now referred to as IWM Duxford. In 1978, the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Belfast became a branch of the museum, in 1984, the Cabinet War Rooms, an underground wartime command centre, was opened to the public. From the 1980s onwards, the museums Bethlem building underwent a series of multimillion-pound redevelopments, finally,2002 saw the opening of IWM North in Trafford, Greater Manchester, the fifth branch of the museum and the first in the north of England. In 2011, the museum rebranded itself as IWM, standing for Imperial War Museums, the museum is funded by government grants, charitable donations, and revenue generation through commercial activity such as retailing, licensing, and publishing. General admission is free to IWM London and IWM North, the museum is an exempt charity under the Charities Act 1993 and a non-departmental public body under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. As of January 2012, the Chairman of the Trustees is Sir Francis Richards, since October 2008, the museums Director General has been Diane Lees. On 27 February 1917 Sir Alfred Mond, a Liberal MP and First Commissioner of Works and this proposal was accepted by the War Cabinet on 5 March 1917 and the decision announced in The Times on 26 March. A committee was established, chaired by Mond, to oversee the collection of material to be exhibited in the new museum, there was an early appreciation of the need for exhibits to reflect personal experience in order to prevent the collections becoming dead relics. Sir Martin Conway, the Museums first Director General, said that exhibits must be vitalised by contributions expressive of the action, the experiences, the valour and the endurance of individuals. The museums first curator and secretary was Charles ffoulkes, who had previously been curator of the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London, in July 1917 Mond made a visit to the Western Front in order to study how best to organise the museums growing collection. While in France he met French government ministers, and Field Marshal Haig, in December 1917 the name was changed to the Imperial War Museum after a resolution from the India and Dominions Committee of the museum. The museum was opened by The King at the Crystal Palace on 9 June 1920, shortly afterwards the Imperial War Museum Act 1920 was passed and established a Board of Trustees to oversee the governance of the museum

32.
Cutty Sark
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Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. She continued as a ship until purchased in 1922 by retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman. After his death, Cutty Sark was transferred to the Thames Nautical Training College, by 1954, she had ceased to be useful as a cadet ship and was transferred to permanent dry dock at Greenwich, London, for public display. Cutty Sark is listed by National Historic Ships as part of the National Historic Fleet, the ship has been damaged by fire twice in recent years, first on 21 May 2007 while undergoing conservation. She was restored and was reopened to the public on 25 April 2012, on 19 October 2014 she was damaged in a smaller fire. Cutty Sark was ordered by shipping magnate John Willis, who operated a company founded by his father. The company had a fleet of clippers and regularly took part in the tea trade from China to Britain. In 1868 the brand new Aberdeen built clipper Thermopylae set a time of 61 days port to port on her maiden voyage from London to Melbourne. It is uncertain how the shape for Cutty Sark was chosen. Willis chose Hercules Linton to design and build the ship but Willis already possessed another ship, The Tweed, which he considered to have exceptional performance. The Tweed was a designed by Oliver Lang based on the lines of an old French frigate. She and a ship were purchased by Willis, who promptly sold the second ship plus engines from The Tweed for more than he paid for both. The Tweed was then lengthened and operated as a fast sailing vessel, Willis also commissioned two all-iron clippers with designs based upon The Tweed, Halloween and Blackadder. Linton was taken to view The Tweed in dry dock, Willis considered that The Tweeds bow shape was responsible for its notable performance, and this form seems to have been adopted for Cutty Sark. Linton, however, felt that the stern was too barrel shaped, the broader stern increased the buoyancy of the ships stern, making it lift more in heavy seas so it was less likely that waves would break over the stern, and over the helmsman at the wheel. The square bilge was carried forward through the centre of the ship, in the matter of masts Cutty Sark also followed the design of The Tweed, with similar good rake and with the foremast on both ships being placed further aft than was usual. A contract for Cutty Sarks construction was signed on 1 February 1869 with the firm of Scott & Linton and their shipyard was at Dumbarton on the River Leven on a site previously occupied by shipbuilders William Denny & Brothers. The contract required the ship to be completed six months at a contracted price of £17 per ton

33.
National Maritime Museum
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The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. The historic buildings form part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, the museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Like other publicly funded museums in the United Kingdom, the National Maritime Museum does not levy an admission charge. The Museum was created by the National Maritime Act of 1934 Chapter 43, under a Board of Trustees and it is based on the generous donations of Sir James Caird. King George VI formally opened the Museum on 27 April 1937 when his daughter Princess Elizabeth, the first Director was Sir Geoffrey Callender. Since earliest times Greenwich has had associations with the sea and navigation and it was a landing place for the Romans, Henry VIII lived here, the navy has roots on the waterfront, and Charles II founded the Royal Observatory in 1675 for finding the longitude of places. An active loans programme ensures that items from the collection are seen in the UK, through its displays, exhibitions and outreach programmes the Museum also explores our current relationship with the sea and the future of the sea as an environmental force and resource. The museum plays host to exhibitions, including Ships Clocks & Stars in 2014, Samuel Pepys, Plague, Fire, Revolution in 2015 and Emma Hamilton, Seduction. The collection of the National Maritime Museum also includes items taken from the German Naval Academy Mürwik after World War II, including several ship models, the museum has been criticized for possessing what has been described as Looted art. The Museum regards these cultural objects as war trophies, removed under the provisions of the Potsdam Conference, the Museum awards the Caird Medal annually in honour of its major donor, Sir James Caird. The Caird Library is a comprehensive specialist reference library and a research resource for all. The reading room is open Monday to Friday,10. 00–16.45, the Archive and Library holds a fantastic range of resources for finding out more about maritime history. Material includes manuscripts, books, charts and maps dating back to the 15th century, the collection can be used to research maritime history and exploration, the history of the Merchant Navy and the Royal Navy and much more, including astronomy and timekeeping. Many of the resources they hold are useful for family historians, including collections of Master’s Certificates dating back to 1845. For news and interesting items from the collection, see Caird Library blog To request items to view in the Library, search Archive catalogue and Library catalogue. The Library has produced a range of guides to help people carry out their own research on a wide range of topics. The guides provide information about the Museums collections and other sources for research into maritime history, find out more about the research guides at Research Guides. The museum was established in 1934 within the 200 acres of Greenwich Royal Park in the buildings formerly occupied by the Royal Hospital School

34.
Queen's House
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Queens House is a former royal residence built between 1616 and 1635 in Greenwich, then a few miles down-river from London and now a district of the city. Its architect was Inigo Jones, for whom it was an early commission, for Anne of Denmark. Queens House is one of the most important buildings in British architectural history and it was Joness first major commission after returning from his 1613–1615 grand tour of Roman, Renaissance, and Palladian architecture in Italy. Furthermore, the form of buildings was not informed by an understanding of classical precedents. Queens House would have appeared revolutionary to English eyes in its day, today the building is both a Grade I listed building and a scheduled ancient monument, a status that includes the 115-foot-wide, axial vista to the River Thames. The house now part of the National Maritime Museum and is used to display parts of their substantial collection of maritime paintings. It was used as a VIP centre during the 2012 Olympic Games, the Queens House is located in Greenwich, London. Construction of the began in 1616 but work on the house stopped in April 1618 when Anne became ill. Work restarted when the house was given to the queen consort Henrietta Maria in 1629 by King Charles I, and the house was structurally complete by 1635. However, the Houses original use was short – no more than seven years – before the English Civil War began in 1642, of its interiors, three ceilings and some wall decorations survive in part, but no interior remains in its original state. This process began as early as 1662, when masons removed a niche and term figures and this is now called the Old Royal Naval College, after its later use from 1873 to 1998. From 1806 the House itself was the centre of what, from 1892 and this necessitated new accommodation wings, and a flanking pair to east and west were added and connected to the House by colonnades from 1807, with further surviving extensions up to 1876. In 1933 the school moved to Holbrook, Suffolk and its Greenwich buildings, including the House, were converted and restored to become the new National Maritime Museum, created by Act of Parliament in 1934 and opened in 1937. The grounds immediately to the north of the House were reinstated in the late 1870s following construction of the tunnel between Greenwich and Maze Hill stations. The tunnel comprised the continuation of the London and Greenwich Railway, the House underwent a 14-month restoration beginning in 2015, and reopened on October 11,2016. One controversial feature was a new ceiling in the hall created by artist Richard Wright. The House was further restored between 1986 and 1999, with contemporary insertions that modernised the building and it is now largely used to display the Museums substantial collection of marine paintings and portraits of the 17th to 20th centuries, and for other public and private events. It is normally open to the daily, free of charge, along with the other museum galleries and the 17th-century Royal Observatory, Greenwich

35.
Royal Observatory, Greenwich
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The Royal Observatory, Greenwich is an observatory situated on a hill in Greenwich Park, overlooking the River Thames. It played a role in the history of astronomy and navigation. The observatory was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, with the stone being laid on 10 August. The site was chosen by Sir Christopher Wren and he appointed John Flamsteed as the first Astronomer Royal. The building was completed in the summer of 1676, the building was often called Flamsteed House, in reference to its first occupant. The scientific work of the observatory was relocated elsewhere in stages in the first half of the 20th century,1675 –22 June, Royal Observatory founded. 1675 –10 August, construction began,1714 Longitude Act established the Board of Longitude and Longitude rewards. The Astronomer Royal was, until the Board was dissolved in 1828,1767 Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne began publication of the Nautical Almanac, based on observations made at the Observatory. 1833 Daily time signals began, marked by dropping a Time ball,1899 The New Physical Observatory was completed. 1924 Hourly time signals from the Royal Observatory were first broadcast on 5 February,1948 Office of the Astronomer Royal was moved to Herstmonceux. 1957 Royal Observatory completed its move to Herstmonceux, becoming the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the Greenwich site is renamed the Old Royal Observatory. Greenwich site is returned to its name, the Royal Observatory. The Ordnance Office was given responsibility for building the Observatory, with Moore providing the key instruments, Moore donated two clocks, built by Thomas Tompion, which were installed in the 20 foot high Octagon Room, the principal room of the building. They were of unusual design, each with a pendulum 13 feet in length mounted above the face, giving a period of four seconds. British astronomers have used the Royal Observatory as a basis for measurement. Four separate meridians have passed through the buildings, defined by successive instruments, subsequently, nations across the world used it as their standard for mapping and timekeeping. When the Airy circle became the reference for the meridian, the difference resulting from the change was considered enough to be neglected. When a new triangulation was done between 1936 and 1962, scientists determined that in the Ordnance Survey system the longitude of the international Greenwich meridian was not 0° and this old astronomical prime meridian has been replaced by a more precise prime meridian

36.
Science Museum Group
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Prior to 1 April 2012 the group was known as the National Museum of Science and Industry. The chairman of the group is Dame Mary Archer who was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron for the term from 2015 from 2018. The term National Museum of Science and Industry had been in use as the Science Museums subtitle since the early 1920s, the National Railway Museum and National Photography Museum were later established as outstations. The Science Museum Group operates as a charity, it also has a wholly owned subsidiary trading company, NMSI Trading Limited, from January 2012 the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester became part of the Science Museum Group. There were concerns some of the Science Museum Groups museums would close under the 2013 Spending Review

37.
Science Museum, London
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The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and today is one of the major tourist attractions. Like other publicly funded museums in the United Kingdom, the Science Museum does not charge visitors for admission. Temporary exhibitions, however, may incur an admission fee and it is part of the Science Museum Group, having merged with the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester in 2012. It included a collection of machinery which became the Museum of Patents in 1858, and this collection contained many of the most famous exhibits of what is now the Science Museum. In 1883, the contents of the Patent Office Museum were transferred to the South Kensington Museum, in 1885, the Science Collections were renamed the Science Museum and in 1893 a separate director was appointed. The Art Collections were renamed the Art Museum, which became the Victoria. When Queen Victoria laid the stone for the new building for the Art Museum, she stipulated that the museum be renamed after herself. On 26 June 1909 the Science Museum, as an independent entity, the Science Museums present quarters, designed by Sir Richard Allison, were opened to the public in stages over the period 1919–28. This building was known as the East Block, construction of which began in 1913, as the name suggests it was intended to be the first building of a much larger project, which was never realized. It also contains hundreds of interactive exhibits, a recent addition is the IMAX 3D Cinema showing science and nature documentaries, most of them in 3-D, and the Wellcome Wing which focuses on digital technology. Entrance has been free since 1 December 2001, the museum houses some of the many objects collected by Henry Wellcome around a medical theme. The fourth floor exhibit is called Glimpses of Medical History, with reconstructions, the fifth floor gallery is called Science and the Art of Medicine, with exhibits of medical instruments and practices from ancient days and from many countries. The collection is strong in clinical medicine, biosciences and public health, the museum is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine. The Science Museum has a library, and until the 1960s was Britains National Library for Science, Medicine. It holds runs of periodicals, early books and manuscripts, and is used by scholars worldwide and it was, for a number of years, run in conjunction with the Library of Imperial College, but in 2007 the Library was divided over two sites. The Imperial College library catalogue search system now informs searchers that volumes formerly held there are Available at Science Museum Library Swindon Currently unavailable, a new Research Centre with library facilities is promised for late 2015 but is unlikely to have book stacks nearby. The Science Museums medical collections have a scope and coverage

38.
Tate
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Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdoms national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is a network of four art museums, Tate Britain, London, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, Cornwall and Tate Modern, London, Tate is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The name Tate is used also as the name for the corporate body. The gallery was founded in 1897, as the National Gallery of British Art, the Tate Gallery was housed in the current building occupied by Tate Britain, which is situated in Millbank, London. Tate Liverpool has the purpose as Tate Modern but on a smaller scale. All four museums share the Tate Collection, one of the Tates most publicised art events is the awarding of the annual Turner Prize, which takes place at Tate Britain. The original Tate was called the National Gallery of British Art, situated on Millbank, Pimlico, the idea of a National Gallery of British Art was first proposed in the 1820s by Sir John Leicester, Baron de Tabley. It took a step nearer when Robert Vernon gave his collection to the National Gallery in 1847, a decade later John Sheepshanks gave his collection to the South Kensington Museum, known for years as the National Gallery of Art. Henry Tate also donated his own collection to the gallery and it was initially a collection solely of modern British art, concentrating on the works of modern—that is Victorian era—painters. It was controlled by the National Gallery until 1954, in 1926 and 1937, the art dealer and patron Joseph Duveen paid for two major expansions of the gallery building. His father had paid for an extension to house the major part of the Turner Bequest. Henry Courtauld also endowed Tate with a purchase fund, by the mid 20th century, it was fulfilling a dual function of showing the history of British art as well as international modern art. In 1954, the Tate Gallery was finally separated from the National Gallery, later, the Tate began organising its own temporary exhibition programme. In 1979 with funding from a Japanese bank a large extension was opened that would also house larger income generating exhibitions. In 1987, the Clore Wing opened to house the major part of the Turner bequest, in 1988, an outpost in north west England opened as Tate Liverpool. This shows various works of art from the Tate collection as well as mounting its own temporary exhibitions. In 2007, Tate Liverpool hosted the Turner Prize, the first time this has been held outside London and this was an overture to Liverpools being the European Capital of Culture 2008. In 1993, another offshoot opened, Tate St Ives and it exhibits work by modern British artists, particularly those of the St Ives School

39.
Tate Britain
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Tate Britain is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and it is the oldest gallery in the network, having opened in 1897. It is one of the largest museums in the country, the gallery is situated on Millbank, on the site of the former Millbank Prison. Construction, undertaken by Higgs and Hill, commenced in 1893, however, from the start it was commonly known as the Tate Gallery, after its founder Sir Henry Tate, and in 1932 it officially adopted that name. As a consequence, it was renamed Tate Britain in March 2000, the front part of the building was designed by Sidney R. J. Smith with a classical portico and dome behind, and the central sculpture gallery was designed by John Russell Pope. Tate Britain includes the Clore Gallery of 1987, designed by James Stirling, crises during its existence include flood damage to work from the River Thames, and bomb damage during World War II. However, most of the collection was in storage elsewhere during the war. In 1970, the building was given Grade II* listed status, the museum stayed open throughout the three phases of renovation. Completed in 2013, the newly designed sections were conceived by the architects Caruso St John and included a total of nine new galleries, with reinforced flooring to accommodate heavy sculptures. A second part was unveiled later that year, the centrepiece being the reopening of the buildings Thames-facing entrance as well as a new spiral staircase beneath its rotunda, the circular balcony of the rotundas domed atrium, closed to visitors since the 1920s, was reopened. The gallery also now has a dedicated entrance and reception beneath its entrance steps on Millbank. The front entrance is accessible by steps, a side entrance at a lower level has a ramp for wheelchair access. The gallery provides a restaurant and a café, as well as a Friends room and this membership is open to the public on payment of an annual subscription. As well as offices the building complex houses the Prints and Drawings Rooms, as well as the Library. The restaurant features a mural by Rex Whistler, Tate Britain and Tate Modern are now connected by a high speed boat along the River Thames, which runs from Millbank Millennium Pier immediately outside Tate Britain. The boat is decorated with spots, based on paintings of similar appearance by Damien Hirst, the lighting artwork incorporated in the piers structure is by Angela Bulloch. The main display spaces show the permanent collection of historic British art, the gallery also organises career retrospectives of British artists and temporary major exhibitions of British Art. Every three years the gallery stages a Triennial exhibition in which a guest curator provides an overview of contemporary British Art, the 2003 Tate Triennial was called Days Like These

40.
Tate Modern
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Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britains national gallery of modern art and forms part of the Tate group. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark, Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art. Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world and it is directly across the river from St Pauls Cathedral. The power station closed in 1981, prior to redevelopment, the power station was a 200 m long, steel framed, brick clad building with a substantial central chimney standing 99 m. The structure was divided into three main areas each running east-west - the huge main turbine hall in the centre, with the boiler house to the north. For many years after closure Bankside Power station was at risk of being demolished by developers, many people campaigned for the building to be saved and put forward suggestions for possible new uses. An application to list the building was refused, in April 1994 the Tate Gallery announced that Bankside would be the home for the new Tate Modern. In July of the year, an international competition was launched to select an architect for the new gallery. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron were announced as the architects in January 1995. The £134 million conversion to the Tate Modern started in June 1995, the most obvious external change was the two-story glass extension on one half of the roof. Much of the internal structure remained, including the cavernous main turbine hall. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron and this challenging conversion work was carried by Carillion. Tate Modern was opened by the Queen on 11 May 2000, Tate Modern received 5.25 million visitors in its first year. The previous year the three existing Tate galleries galleries had received 2.5 million visitors combined, Tate Modern had attracted more visitors than originally expected and plans to expand it had been in preparation since 2004. These plans focused on the south west of the building with the intention of providing 5, 000m2 of new display space, the southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation. In 2006, the released the western half of this holding and plans were made to replace the structure with a tower extension to the museum. The tower was to be built over the old oil storage tanks, structural, geotechnical, civil, and façade engineering and environmental consultancy was undertaken by Ramboll between 2008 and 2016

41.
Victoria and Albert Museum
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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is the worlds largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and these include the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Royal Albert Hall. The museum is a public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media. Like other national British museums, entrance to the museum has been free since 2001, the V&A covers 12.5 acres and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5,000 years of art, from ancient times to the present day, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. The museum owns the worlds largest collection of sculpture, with the holdings of Italian Renaissance items being the largest outside Italy. The departments of Asia include art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea, the East Asian collections are among the best in Europe, with particular strengths in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection is amongst the largest in the Western world. Overall, it is one of the largest museums in the world, New 17th- and 18th-century European galleries were opened on 9 December 2015. These restored the original Aston Webb interiors and host the European collections 1600–1815, at this stage the collections covered both applied art and science. Several of the exhibits from the Exhibition were purchased to form the nucleus of the collection, by February 1854 discussions were underway to transfer the museum to the current site and it was renamed South Kensington Museum. In 1855 the German architect Gottfried Semper, at the request of Cole, produced a design for the museum, but it was rejected by the Board of Trade as too expensive. The site was occupied by Brompton Park House, this was extended including the first refreshment rooms opened in 1857, the official opening by Queen Victoria was on 22 June 1857. In the following year, late night openings were introduced, made possible by the use of gas lighting, in these early years the practical use of the collection was very much emphasised as opposed to that of High Art at the National Gallery and scholarship at the British Museum. George Wallis, the first Keeper of Fine Art Collection, passionately promoted the idea of art education through the museum collections. From the 1860s to the 1880s the scientific collections had been moved from the museum site to various improvised galleries to the west of Exhibition Road. In 1893 the Science Museum had effectively come into existence when a director was appointed. The laying of the stone of the Aston Webb building on 17 May 1899 was the last official public appearance by Queen Victoria. It was during this ceremony that the change of name from the South Kensington Museum to the Victoria, the exhibition which the museum organised to celebrate the centennial of the 1899 renaming, A Grand Design, first toured in North America from 1997, returning to London in 1999

42.
V&A Museum of Childhood
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The V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in the East End of London is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is the United Kingdoms national museum of applied arts. The museum was founded in 1872 as the Bethnal Green Museum, the iron structure reused a prefabricated building from Albertopolis which was replaced with some early sections of the modern V&A complex. The exterior of the building was designed by James William Wild in red brick in a Rundbogenstil style very similar to that in contemporary Germany. The building was used to display a variety of collections at different times, in the 1920s, it began to focus on services for children, and in 1974 the director of the V&A, Sir Roy Strong, defined it as a specialist museum of childhood. Of all the branches, the Bethnal Green Museum has the largest collection of objects in the United Kingdom. The mission of the museum is To enable everyone, especially the young, to explore and enjoy the world, in particular objects made for. It has extensive collections of toys, childhood equipment and costumes, the museum closed in October 2005 for the second phase of extensive renovations, costing £4.7 million. It reopened on 9 December 2006 with changes including a new front entrance, gallery, displays, inside the museum is a cast iron statue by John Bell. It came originally from the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Eagle slayer shows a marksman shooting at an eagle which has slain the lamb that lies at his feet. The museum is a Grade II listed building, anthony Burton Official website Interactive 360° virtual tour

43.
Courtauld Gallery
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The Courtauld Gallery UK /ˈkɔərtoʊld/ is an art museum in Somerset House, on the Strand in central London. It houses the art collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art, in total, the collection contains some 530 paintings and over 26,000 drawings and prints. The Head of the Courtauld Gallery is Ernst Vegelin, the art collection at the Courtauld was begun by Samuel Courtauld, who in the same year presented an extensive collection of paintings, mainly French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. He made further gifts later in the 1930s and a bequest in 1948, further bequests were added after the Second World War, most notably the collection of Old Master paintings assembled by Lord Lee, a founder of the Institute. This included Cranachs Adam and Eve and a sketch in oils by Peter Paul Rubens for what is arguably his masterpiece, Sir Robert Witt, also a founder of the Courtauld Institute, was an outstanding benefactor and bequeathed his important collection of Old Master and British drawings in 1952. His bequest included 20,000 prints and more than 3000 drawings and his son, Sir John Witt, later gave more English watercolours and drawings to the Gallery. M. W. Turner, Peter De Wint and others, in 1978 the Courtauld received the Princes Gate Collection of Old Master paintings and drawings formed by Count Antoine Seilern. The collection rivals the Samuel Courtauld Collection in importance and it includes paintings by Bernardo Daddi, Robert Campin, Bruegel, Quentin Matsys, Van Dyck and Tiepolo, but is strongest in the works of Rubens. The bequest also included a group of 19th- and 20th‑century works by Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, more recently the Lillian Browse and Alastair Hunter collections have given the Courtauld more late 19th- and 20th‑century paintings, drawings and sculptures. A collection of more than 50 British watercolours, including eight by Turner, was left to the Gallery by Dorothy Scharf in 2004, the Courtauld Gallery is open to the public. The Royal Academy occupied them from their completion in 1780 until it moved to the new National Gallery building in Trafalgar Square in 1837. Inscribed over the entrance to the Great Room, in which the annual Royal Academy summer exhibition was held, is the formidable inscription ΟΥΔΕΙΣ ΑΜΟΥΣΟΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ. Many of his purchases were made on trips to the continent, especially Italy, but he bought from dealers and auctions in England. The Courtauld Gallery website shows images and descriptions of 324 objects from the 1966 bequest, there are two further predella panels by Lorenzo Monaco, and many other small panels by lesser-known masters. Later Renaissance works include ones by Il Garofalo, Sassoferrato, there are a number of illuminated manuscript pages from the workshop of the Boucicaut Master. The sculptures include three fine 15th-century marble reliefs of the Virgin and Child, the most significant by Mino da Fiesole, there is a Limoges enamel book cover panel, a number of Renaissance Limoges items, and several small Gothic ivories. The Courtauld publishes an online collection, artandarchitecture. org. The site was developed with the support of the New Opportunities Fund, two other websites courtauldimages. com and courtauldprints. com sell high resolution digital files to scholars, publishers and broadcasters, and photographic prints to the general public

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Dulwich Picture Gallery
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Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London. The gallery, designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination and it is the oldest public art gallery in England and was made an independent charitable trust in 1994. Until this time the gallery was part of Alleyns College of Gods Gift, Edward Alleyn was an actor who became an entrepreneur in Elizabethan theatre. His commercial interests in the Rose and Fortune Theatres, gave him sufficient wealth to acquire the Manor of Dulwich in 1605 and he founded a college at Dulwich, the College of Gods Gift, and endowed it with his estate. It was a school for boys and next to it were almshouses for the local poor, the college became three separate beneficiary schools – Dulwich College, Alleyns School, and James Allens Girls School, named after an early-18th century headmaster. The college, the almshouses and chapel survive next to the gallery on Gallery Road. Alleyn bequeathed the college of a collection of works including portraits of the kings, the college retained connections with the theatre and in 1686, the actor William Cartwright bequeathed a collection of 239 pictures, of which 80 are now identifiable at Dulwich. In the 18th century, the collection was displayed on the first floor of the wing of the Old College and it attracted few additions during this period, and recorded descriptions of the gallery suggest disappointment and apathy from its visitors. The art historian and Whig politician Horace Walpole wrote that he saw a hundred mouldy portraits among apostles sibyls, the Dulwich collection was improved in size and quality by Sir Francis Bourgeois, originally from Switzerland, and his business partner, Frenchman Noël Desenfans. Their involvement saw the Gallery make significant steps towards its present state, Desenfans had lobbied the British Government to create a similar British national collection and offered to contribute to it, but was unenthusiastically received. Touring around Europe buying fine art, Bourgeois and Desenfans took five years to assemble the collection, Bourgeois and Desenfans attempted to sell the collection but were unsuccessful. Instead, they sold small pieces to fund the purchase of other important works, after the death of Desenfans in 1807, Bourgeois inherited the collection. He commissioned Sir John Soane to design and construct a mausoleum at Desenfans house, Bourgeois bequeathed his collection to the College of Gods Gift on the advice of the actor John Philip Kemble, a friend of both dealers. Bourgeois left instructions in his will for the construction of a gallery in Dulwich, designed by Soane and it was next to the original college buildings by the chapel. He also left £2,000 for construction costs and £4,000 was contributed by Desenfans widow. The gallery was opened to students of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1815 and it became a popular venue for copyists from London schools of art. Charles Dickens mentions Dulwich Picture Gallery in his novel The Pickwick Papers, as Samuel Pickwick, barbara and The Three Graces, and one, A Lady Playing on the Clavicord by Gerrit Dou and Susannah and the Elders by Adam Elsheimer. They were worth at least £3 million but a reward of just £1,000 was offered for their return, within a few days all the paintings were recovered after an investigation led by Detective Superintendent Charles Hewett, who had previously investigated suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams

Eastbury Park
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Eastbury Park was a country estate near Tarrant Gunville in Dorset, England. It contained a large mansion designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, the mansion has not survived, but its former service wing has become a country house known as Eastbury House, a Grade I listed building. The house was designed by Vanbrugh for George Dodington, who was Secretary t

1.
Eastbury House: The former service wing of Eastbury House is all that remains now of John Vanbrugh's once great mansion, his third largest and one of his most important, ranking alongside Blenheim Palace

Manor House
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A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The term is loosely applied to various country houses, frequently dating from the late medieval era. They were sometimes fortified, but this was intended more for show than for defence. Manor houses existed in most European countries where feudalism existed, where they were

4.
Markenfield Hall, Ripon, North Yorkshire, a 14th-century manor house defended by a moat, wall and gatehouse

Elizabethan architecture
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Elizabethan architecture is the term given to early Renaissance architecture in England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Historically, the period corresponds to the Cinquecento in Italy, the Early Renaissance in France, and the Plateresque style in Spain. In contrast to her father Henry VIII, Elizabeth commissioned no new palaces, and very f

1.
English Renaissance: Hardwick Hall (1590–1597), a classic prodigy house. The numerous and large mullioned windows are typically English Renaissance, while the loggia is Italian.

Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a

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Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.

Listed building
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A listed building or listed structure, in the United Kingdom, is one that has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The statutory bodies maintaining the list are Historic England in England, Cadw in Wales, Historic Scotland in Scotland, however, the preferred term in Ireland is protected struc

1.
The Forth Bridge, designed by Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler, opened in 1890, and now owned by Network Rail, is designated as a Category A listed building by Historic Scotland.

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Buckingham Palace, the official London residence of the British monarch, listed Grade I.

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Royal Festival Hall, London was the first postwar building to gain Grade I-listed status.

4.
The Grade I listed King's College London Chapel on the Strand Campus seen today was redesigned in 1864 by Sir George Gilbert Scott

London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
–
The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is a London borough in East London, England. It lies around 9 miles east of Central London and it is an Outer London borough and the south is within the London Riverside section of the Thames Gateway, an area designated as a national priority for urban regeneration. At the 2011 census it had a population o

1.
Coat of arms

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Barking and Dagenham shown within Greater London

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The former town hall of the Municipal Borough of Barking

Greater London
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London, or Greater London, is a region of England which forms the administrative boundaries of London. It is organised into 33 local government districts, the 32 London boroughs, the Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assemb

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London

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Greater London shown within England

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The Greater London Authority is based in City Hall

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High resolution view from the top of Tolworth Tower in South West London over the sprawling suburban housing that is typical in some areas of Greater London

Elizabethan
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The Elizabethan era is the epoch in English history marked by the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Historians often depict it as the age in English history. In terms of the century, the historian John Guy argues that England was economically healthier, more expansive. This golden age represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowerin

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Queen Elizabeth

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The National Armada memorial in Plymouth using the Britannia image to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (William Charles May, sculptor, 1888)

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Elizabeth ushers in Peace and Plenty. Detail from The Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession, c. 1572, attributed to Lucas de Heere.

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The Spanish Armada fighting the English navy at the Battle of Gravelines in 1588.

Demesne
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In England royal demesne is the land held by the Crown, and ancient demesne is the legal term for the land held by the king at the time of the Domesday Book. The word derives from Old French demeine, ultimately from Latin dominus, lord, the word barton, which is an element found in many place-names, can refer to a demesne farm, it derives from Old

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Conjectural map of a feudal manor. The mustard-colored areas are part of the demesne, the hatched areas part of the glebe. The manor house, residence of the lord and location of the manorial court, can be seen in the mid-southern part of the manor

Barking Abbey
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Barking Abbey is a former royal monastery located in Barking, in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. It has been described as one of the most important nunneries in the country, originally established in the 7th century, from the late 10th century the abbey followed the Rule of St. Benedict. The abbey had an endowment and sizable income but

Dissolution of the Monasteries
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Although the policy was originally envisaged as increasing the regular income of the Crown, much former monastic property was sold off to fund Henrys military campaigns in the 1540s. Professor George W. Bernard argues, The dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. one adult man in

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The ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, dissolved in 1539 following the execution of the abbot

4.
Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein: Chief Minister for Henry VIII and Vicegerent in Spirituals; created the administrative machinery for the Dissolution

Dendrochronology
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Dendrochronology is the scientific method of dating tree rings to the exact year they were formed in order to analyze atmospheric conditions during different periods in history. Dendrochronology is useful for determining the timing of events and rates of change in the environment and also in works of art and architecture, such as old panel painting

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Drill for dendrochronology sampling and growth ring counting

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The growth rings of a tree at Bristol Zoo, England. Each ring represents one year; the outside rings, near the bark, are the youngest.

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Diagram of secondary growth in a tree showing idealised vertical and horizontal sections. A new layer of wood is added in each growing season, thickening the stem, existing branches and roots, to form a growth ring.

Lead
–
Lead is a chemical element with atomic number 82 and symbol Pb. When freshly cut, it is bluish-white, it tarnishes to a dull gray upon exposure to air and it is a soft, malleable, and heavy metal with a density exceeding that of most common materials. Lead has the second-highest atomic number of the stable elements. Lead is a relatively unreactive

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Lead, 82 Pb

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A sample of freshly solidified lead (from molten state)

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World lead production peaking in the Roman period and the rising Industrial Revolution

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Lead ingots from Roman Britain on display at the Wells and Mendip Museum

Gunpowder Plot
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Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed. Fawkes, who had 10 years of experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives. The plot was revealed to the authoriti

1.
A late 17th or early 18th century report of the plot

2.
Elizabeth I

3.
King James's daughter Princess Elizabeth, whom the conspirators planned to install on the throne as a Catholic Queen

4.
A contemporary engraving of eight of the thirteen conspirators, by Crispijn van de Passe. Missing are Digby, Keyes, Rookwood, Grant, and Tresham.

Historic England
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Historic England is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with protecting the environment of England by preserving and listing historic buildings, ancient monuments. The body was created by the National Heritage Act 1983. Historic England has a remi

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Historic England

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Historic England's Swindon Office and home to their Archives.

List of museums in London
–
This is a list of museums in London, the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. It also includes university and non-profit art galleries, to use the sortable table, click on the icons at the top of each column to sort that column in alphabetical order, click again for reverse alphabetical order. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport

1.
2 Willow Road

2.
7 Hammersmith Terrace

3.
All Hallows-by-the-Tower Crypt Museum

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Apsley House

British Library
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The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the second largest library in the world by number of items catalogued. It holds well over 150 million items from many countries, as a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant propor

4.
Interior of the British Library, with the smoked glass wall of the King's Library in the background.

British Museum
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The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally

1.
British Museum

2.
The centre of the museum was redeveloped in 2001 to become the Great Court, surrounding the original Reading Room.

3.
Sir Hans Sloane

4.
Montagu House, c. 1715

Geffrye Museum
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The Geffrye Museum of the Home is located in Shoreditch, London. The Museum explores home and home life from 1600 to the present day, named after Sir Robert Geffrye, a former Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Ironmongers Company, it is located on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, London. The museum is set in beautiful 18th-century Grade I-listed a

1.
The Geffrye Museum of the Home

Horniman Museum
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The Horniman Museum and Gardens is a British museum in Forest Hill, London, England. Commissioned in 1898, it opened in 1901 and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Arts and Crafts style and it is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and is constituted as a company and registered charity under E

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Horniman Museum and Gardens

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The museum's Natural History gallery showing the distribution of modern humans.

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The bandstand overlooking the London skyline

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Humanity in the House of Circumstance

National Army Museum
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The National Army Museum is the British Armys central museum. It is located in the Chelsea district of central London, adjacent to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the museum is a non-departmental public body. The National Army Museum is usually open to the every day of the year from 10. 00am to 5. 30pm, except on 24–26 December and 1 January. Though th

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The main entrance of the National Army Museum from Royal Hospital Road.

2.
Logo of the National Army Museum

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Napoleonic Wars

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Mary Seacole, Crimean War and Indian Mutiny

National Gallery
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The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the century to 1900. The Gallery is a charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media. Its collection belongs to the public of the Unite

2.
The Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano del Piombo, from the collection of John Julius Angerstein. This became the founding collection of the National Gallery in 1824. The painting has the accession number NG1, making it officially the first painting to enter the Gallery.

3.
100 Pall Mall, the home of the National Gallery from 1824 to 1834.

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The Baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca, one of Eastlake's purchases.

National Portrait Gallery, London
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The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856, the gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martins Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery. It has be

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Entrance to the National Portrait Gallery

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The Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare, the first painting to enter the NPG's collection

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Inside the National Portrait Gallery

Natural History Museum, London
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The Natural History Museum in London is a museum of natural history that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum, the Natural History Museums main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road. The museum is hom

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Natural History Museum

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An 1881 plan showing the original arrangement of the Museum. (Link to current floor plans).

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The Natural History Museum, shown in wide-angle view here, has an ornate terracotta facade by Gibbs and Canning Limited typical of high Victorian architecture. The terracotta mouldings represent the past and present diversity of nature.

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The main hall of the museum

Royal Air Force Museum London
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It is part of the Royal Air Force Museum, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Defence and a registered charity. A second collection of exhibits, plus aircraft restoration facilities, is housed at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, the museum was officially opened at the Colindale London site on

1.
Royal Air Force Museum London

2.
CR 42 Falco at the Battle of Britain hall

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The Sopwith Camel in the 'Milestones of Flight' hall

4.
Avro Lancaster R5868 in the Bomber Hall of the RAF Museum London

Sir John Soane's Museum
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Sir John Soanes Museum was formerly the home of the neo-classical architect John Soane. It holds many drawings and models of Soanes projects and the collections of paintings, drawings, the museum is located in Holborn, London, adjacent to Lincolns Inn Fields. It is a public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media. Soane demolished and r

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Sir John Soane's Museum

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For the most part, the museum retains Soane's original crowded "hang", as the Soane Museum Act requires.

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The facade of Sir John Soane's House (No. 13) circa 1812. The loggias were later glazed

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The breakfast room as shown in the Illustrated London News 1864.

Wallace Collection
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The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, the Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body. The Collection numbers nearly 5,500 objects and is best known for its quality and breadth of eighteenth-cen

1.
Hertford House in Manchester Square, London, home of the Wallace Collection

2.
Frans Hals – The Laughing Cavalier, 1624

3.
Nicolas Poussin – A Dance to the Music of Time, c. 1634–36

4.
Large Drawing Room - Contains some of the most spectacular works by the French furniture-maker, Andre-Charles Boulle

Imperial War Museums
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Imperial War Museums is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain, the museums remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which Brit

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Sir Alfred Mond, photographed between 1910 and 1920.

2.
Imperial War Museums

3.
The Imperial Institute, South Kensington, where the museum was located from 1924–1936

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15-inch guns outside the museum; the nearer gun from HMS Ramillies, the other from HMS Roberts.

Churchill War Rooms
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The Churchill War Rooms is a museum in London and one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. Construction of the Cabinet War Rooms, located beneath the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster and they became operational in August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war in Europe. They remained in operation throughout the S

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The Map Room of the Cabinet War Rooms.

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The Great George Street face of the New Public Offices, the basement of which accommodates the Cabinet War Rooms.

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The Cabinet War Rooms office-bedroom of Brendan Bracken, Churchill's Minister of Information.

4.
Public entrance, before the 2012 redesign, Clive Steps with the Treasury building on the right and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the left.

HMS Belfast (C35)
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HMS Belfast is a museum ship, originally a Royal Navy light cruiser, permanently moored on the River Thames in London, England, and operated by the Imperial War Museum. Construction of Belfast, the first Royal Navy ship to be named after the city of Northern Ireland and one of ten Town-class cruisers. She was launched on St Patricks Day 1938, commi

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HMS Belfast at her London berth, painted in Admiralty pattern Disruptive Camouflage

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Shells in a rack in the underwater magazine serving the "A" Turret of Belfast.

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March 1951: Belfast fires a salvo against enemy troop concentrations on the west coast of Korea.

Imperial War Museum
–
Imperial War Museums is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain, the museums remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which Brit

1.
Sir Alfred Mond, photographed between 1910 and 1920.

2.
Imperial War Museums

3.
The Imperial Institute, South Kensington, where the museum was located from 1924–1936

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15-inch guns outside the museum; the nearer gun from HMS Ramillies, the other from HMS Roberts.

Cutty Sark
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Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. She continued as a ship until purchased in 1922 by retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman. After his death, Cutty Sark was transferred to the Thames Nautical Training College, by 1954, she had ceased to be useful as a cadet ship and was transferred to permanent dry dock at Greenwich, London, for public display. Cut

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Cutty Sark in 2015

3.
Cutty Sark with sails set. Photograph taken at sea by Captain Woodget with a camera balanced on two of the ship's boats lashed together.

National Maritime Museum
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The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. The historic buildings form part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, the museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Like ot

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National Maritime Museum

2.
Portrait of Captain James Cook by Nathaniel Dance at the National Maritime Museum.

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The Bretagne, painting by Jules Achille Noël, 1859, at the National Maritime Museum

Queen's House
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Queens House is a former royal residence built between 1616 and 1635 in Greenwich, then a few miles down-river from London and now a district of the city. Its architect was Inigo Jones, for whom it was an early commission, for Anne of Denmark. Queens House is one of the most important buildings in British architectural history and it was Joness fir

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The Queen's House, viewed from the main gate

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The Tulip Stairs and lantern; the first centrally unsupported helical stairs constructed in England. The stairs are supported by a combination of support by cantilever from the walls and each tread resting on the one below.

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Plans of the Queen's House. The salon is a 40-foot (12.2 m) cube.

4.
The Queen's House and the Greenwich Hospital in the painting London from Greenwich Park, in 1809, by William Turner

Royal Observatory, Greenwich
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The Royal Observatory, Greenwich is an observatory situated on a hill in Greenwich Park, overlooking the River Thames. It played a role in the history of astronomy and navigation. The observatory was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, with the stone being laid on 10 August. The site was chosen by Sir Christopher Wren and he appointed John Fla

1.
Royal Observatory, Greenwich. A time ball sits atop the Octagon Room.

2.
Flamsteed House in 1824

3.
Royal Observatory, Greenwich c. 1902 as depicted on a postcard

4.
Former Royal Greenwich Observatory, Herstmonceux, East Sussex

Science Museum Group
–
Prior to 1 April 2012 the group was known as the National Museum of Science and Industry. The chairman of the group is Dame Mary Archer who was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron for the term from 2015 from 2018. The term National Museum of Science and Industry had been in use as the Science Museums subtitle since the early 1920s, the Nation

1.
The Science Museum Group logo

Science Museum, London
–
The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and today is one of the major tourist attractions. Like other publicly funded museums in the United Kingdom, the Science Museum does not charge visitors for admission. Temporary exhibitions, however, may incur an admission fee and it is part

1.
The Science Museum

2.
Strike action at the Science Museum in June 2008.

3.
Replica of the DNA model built by Crick and Watson in 1953.

4.
Old Bess, the oldest surviving steam engine, made by James Watt, in 1777.

Tate
–
Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdoms national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is a network of four art museums, Tate Britain, London, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, Cornwall and Tate Modern, London, Tate is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Cultu

1.
The original Tate Gallery, now renamed Tate Britain

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The logo of Tate, used in several similar versions and colours, was designed by Wolff Olins in 2000.

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Tate Liverpool opened in 1988.

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Tate St Ives opened in 1993.

Tate Britain
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Tate Britain is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and it is the oldest gallery in the network, having opened in 1897. It is one of the largest museums in the country, the gallery is situated on Millbank, on the site of the former M

Tate Modern
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Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britains national gallery of modern art and forms part of the Tate group. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark, Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and

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Tate Modern

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The Turbine Hall

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Stairs and windows

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Chimney of Tate Modern. The Swiss Light at its top was designed by Michael Craig-Martin and the architects Herzog & de Meuron and was sponsored by the Swiss government. It was dismantled in May 2008.

Victoria and Albert Museum
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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is the worlds largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and these include the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Royal Albert Hall. The museum is a public bod

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Entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum

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In 2000, an 11 metre high, blown glass chandelier by Dale Chihuly was installed as a focal point in the rotunda at the V&A's main entrance.

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Henry Cole, the museum's first director

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Frieze detail from internal courtyard showing Queen Victoria in front of the 1851 Great Exhibition.

V&A Museum of Childhood
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The V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in the East End of London is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is the United Kingdoms national museum of applied arts. The museum was founded in 1872 as the Bethnal Green Museum, the iron structure reused a prefabricated building from Albertopolis which was replaced with some early sectio

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V&A Museum of Childhood

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The official opening of the Bethnal Green Museum by the Prince of Wales in 1872.

Courtauld Gallery
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The Courtauld Gallery UK /ˈkɔərtoʊld/ is an art museum in Somerset House, on the Strand in central London. It houses the art collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art, in total, the collection contains some 530 paintings and over 26,000 drawings and prints. The Head of the Courtauld Gallery is Ernst Vegelin, the art collection at the Courtauld w

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Interior of the Courtauld Gallery

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A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) by Édouard Manet

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The Strand block of Somerset House, designed by William Chambers from 1775 to 1780, home of the Courtauld Institute and the Courtauld Gallery since 1989

Dulwich Picture Gallery
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Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London. The gallery, designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination and it is the oldest public art gallery in England and was made an independent charitable trust in 1994. Until this time the gallery was part of Alleyns College of G

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Satiric drawing of Sir William Chambers, one of the founders, trying to slay the 8-headed hydra of the Incorporated Society of Artists

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Study for Henry Singleton 's painting The Royal Academicians assembled in their council chamber to adjudge the Medals to the successful students in Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Drawing, which hangs in the Royal Academy. Ca. 1793.

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An early RA Summer Exhibition at the Academy's original home in Somerset House

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The old Palace of Whitehall, showing the Banqueting House to the left

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Inigo Jones' 1638 plan for a new palace at Whitehall, "one of the grandest architectural conceptions of the renaissance in England"; the Banqueting House is incorporated to the near left of the central courtyard

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A contemporaneous print showing the 1649 execution of Charles I outside the inaccurately depicted Banqueting House

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Anne Boleyn's Gate. The Tudor gatehouse and astronomical clock, made for Henry VIII in 1540 (C on plan above) Two of the Renaissance bas reliefs by Giovanni di Maiano can be seen set into the brickwork.

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Charles Darwin's study at Down House, restored with original furniture including his wheeled armchair and writing board. On the right, two (shuttered) windows look east, and Darwin had an angled mirror fixed outside to see who was coming up the drive to the entrance.

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The west front of Down House looks out onto its gardens, and the main block is dominated by the angled walls of the bay extension Darwin had built in 1843. The kitchen wing to the right has a classroom on the upper floor, and the block to the left, added in 1858, has a drawing room behind the glazed roofed verandah.

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The earliest known depiction of the house: detail of the 1619 Earl of Dorset's Survey of Tottenham. The Norman All Hallows Church and priory, then as now the oldest surviving buildings in the area, are also shown.

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The round tower

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Richard Sackville, by William Larkin; in the collection of the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood House. Sackville's large debts led to the sale of the house to Hugh Hare.